Izvestia: ”Putin promises new benefits for law enforcement employees”
The police are to have affordable mortgage and equal criminal responsibility with civilians.
At a meeting with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin at the Law Institute in Barnaul, the police asked Putin about new benefits and payments.
"I will gladly answer your questions," Putin began. But there were no questions only requests.
Svetlana Petrova, head of the Interior Ministry Department on financial and economic policy and social guarantees, complained:
"Rank payments have grown four times on average, and monetary remuneration as a whole has doubled across the country. However, our surveys have shown that there are some categories of employees whose remuneration has not grown accordingly. These were mostly top officials."
This inequality occurred mainly because the region paid part of the police's salary, but now the law prohibits this. Putin promised to fix it: "We are drafting amendments to the Law on Police and we will submit them when they are ready."
The prime minister also promised to think about an affordable mortgage system for employees of law-enforcement agencies. Senior police lieutenant Dmitry Zatsepin asked him about this. For now, only military personnel enjoy a mortgage rate of 4% annual interest.
"We still proceed from the fact that Interior Ministry officers live in one and the same region, and they don't move from place to place like military personnel," Putin said. "But I don't see why we cannot promote similar affordable mortgage programmes within the Interior Ministry. Technically speaking, it is possible to work out an affordable accumulation system for all Interior Ministry officers and to modernise it slightly year after year."
In addition, the police were promised that their salaries would be adjusted every year – at least for inflation and pensioners were told that the special reduction factor used in calculating their pensions will be decreased from 54% to 30%. In this scenario, their pensions will almost match their service pay. Putin also promised to remove a provision of the criminal code stating that a premeditated crime committed by an interior employee is an aggravating circumstance.
The only request that the prime minister did not approve was regarding service flats where police inspectors could live and work.
"It's still better to work and live in different places," Putin said. "Instead of welcoming guests, policemen will have to meet their wards."
Despite all these promises and guarantees, the police did not seem quite satisfied.
"We agreed that there would be more questions and requests," Col. Mikhail Ulitin (Ret.), deputy chairman of the Altai Territory Ministry of the Interior Veteran Council, admitted to Izvestia. "But the younger people were too shy to ask for more."
He said they wanted to ask Putin for higher pensions for policemen who were veterans of combat operations and benefits for volunteer police units – in Soviet times, they were entitled to additional days-off at their primary job and received other benefits, such as free public transport.
Alexandra Bayazitova
