Government may be granted the right to review salaries of state auditors: Transparency International Ukraine vs
13 January 17:21
The MPs want to give the Cabinet of Ministers the power to determine the salaries of employees of the State Audit Service separately, as well as to grant the agency a special status and special titles for its employees. Transparency International Ukraine emphasizes that this approach is wrong, Komersant ukrainskyi reports.
According to the activists, the salaries of the State Audit Service employees should be reviewed in conjunction with other important changes related to the activities of this body.
The very way the changes were adopted raises questions
Transparency International Ukraine reminds that in mid-December, the Verkhovna Rada adopted as a basis the government’s draft law No. 12245 aimed at updating the provisions of the Budget Code and ensuring that Ukraine fulfills a number of obligations to international partners.
The first version of the draft law included provisions on changing the procedure for remuneration of the State Audit Service employees, but on the recommendation of the Budget Committee, these proposals were excluded after the first reading.
However, in the process of preparing the draft law for further consideration, MPs have already included a number of proposals to change the status of the State Audit Service and its employees. And on January 10, the relevant subcommittee supported the relevant amendment, which
– grants the State Audit Service a special status;
– establishes special titles for the agency’s civil servants;
– defines the structure of their salaries and vests the government with the authority to determine the size of their official salaries.

Why not adopting the changes would be the right decision
Transparency International Ukraine urges to reject these changes and explains why:
– currently, there are no calculations for a reasonable revision of salaries in the agency;
– determination of salaries by the government’s decision will not provide guarantees of their predictability and sustainability due to the influence of budgetary and political processes;
– it would be much better to fix the salaries at the level of the law.
The activists remind that the Parliament and the Government are preparing to introduce a unified classification of civil service positions and a unified system of remuneration (grades) in 2025, and emphasize that the revision of salaries of the State Audit Service employees should be carried out in conjunction with other important changes related to the activities of this body.
What is proposed to be changed in the activities of the State Audit Service?
The first step, according to Transparency International Ukraine, should be the harmonization of powers between the Accounting Chamber and the State Audit Service. After the adoption of the law that expanded the powers of the Accounting Chamber to audit local budgets, the issue of overlapping functions of these bodies remains unresolved. The Budget Committee agrees with this and the European Commission emphasizes this.
At the next stage, it is important to strengthen the efficiency and capacity of the body by introducing competitive selection and re-certification of current employees to take up positions in the renewed State Audit Service. Such changes will ensure that qualified specialists will be able to obtain decent working conditions.
At the same time, it is important to improve approaches to certain control measures.
There are those in the Parliament who agree with the activists
People’s Deputy Yaroslav Zheleznyak supports Transparency International in saying that the above amendments should be rejected.
“I have never been an apologist for low salaries, but this should only happen after the reform of the body. At least some institutional changes! But for MPs from groups to just throw in a left-wing amendment and hope that it will pass unnoticed… well, at least we will be quarreling over this approach,” the MP said.
Yaroslav Zhelezniak also does not like the fact that all this is being done through a normal budget bill, the adoption of which is also a beacon for the IMF.