Ulyanovsk region seriously deals with unemployment issue

In the Ulyanovsk region, local authorities offer to introduce changes in the federal laws on employment. Adequate legislative initiatives will be sent to the State Duma.

In particular, the governor of the Ulyanovsk region drew attention to discrepancy in the statistics. Not every person, who is registered at labor exchange, is, in fact, unemployed.

"Look carefully at the numbers: suburban areas mostly have a high share of the unemployed registered at labor exchanges for a long time. The fact that they, in accordance with federal laws, receive benefits and illegally work at the same time, constitutes an element of fraud with public funds. One needs to eradicate this practice," said Sergey Morozov. There are incidents, when citizens are registered as unemployed, because employers, giving them wages "in envelopes," do not want to employ a person officially. To legalize labor relations, it was proposed to exclude the period of unemployment benefits from the periods included in the calculation of insurance.

"Local authorities in the face of legislative and executive authorities of the region pay attention to the problem, and this is very good. The number of such people grows considerably. First, the number of people, who become registered to receive unemployment allowance not to work at all, grows too. We came across this problem in small settlements, where wages are low, and of course, when a person compares the amount of allowance and their salary of 5-6 thousand rubles a month, they take a decision for themselves: it is more profitable to receive unemployment benefits. First off, they save on transport. Secondly, they have whole days free, and thirdly, they do not stress themselves physically or emotionally. People choose this option, and we receive dependents. Moreover, the people, who receive unemployment benefits, may also work and get paid in envelopes. This phenomenon has been growing, and I will explain what the problem is about. The problem is that employers break the law just like their employees do, when they decide not to employ people officially, - deputy head of the State Duma Committee on Labor, Social Policy and Veterans Affairs, Elena Afanasyeva told Pravda.Ru. - In this issue, one needs to establish order from the top, through employers, by introducing penalties of administrative nature in cases of gross violations and criminal nature. This is a positive factor that they started to not only notice, but also speak about it openly in the regions. It is the regions that can encourage federal agencies to eventually tackle this problem."

In the Ulyanovsk region, the unemployment rate is one of the lowest in the country. It makes up only 0.55 percent of the economically active population in the region, and indicators continue to improve. The quarterly plan to create new jobs has been over fulfilled during 1.5 months. Local authorities established the work to train and retrain the unemployed to meet current demands of the labor market.

"We once offered to take the unemployment threshold as one of the criteria of the work of the authorities - to keep record of the unemployed, create new jobs to make the number of the unemployed as small as possible, a member of the Commission for Population Policy, member of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation, Chairman of the Labour Relations Commission and Pension, Ivan Mokhnachuk told Pravda.Ru. - There is big money allocated for this. The fact that it can be used effectively somewhere and not very effectively elsewhere is a separate question. In the Ulyanovsk region, the unemployment rate is very low, only half a percent, and one can only welcome this."