Verkhovna Rada, Crimeans
On July 15 civil organizations from Crimea held a roundtable discussion in Verkhovna Rada where they initiated creation of ministry of forced migrants. On July 17 the government claimed about creation of Civil Service for the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Sevastopol and temporary displaced individuals. However, the appropriate resolution No.297 regarding its creation saw the world only on the 5th of August after intervention of civil society. The service itself hasn’t been created yet.
Elections of the head for this service, which is exceptionally important for immigrants, should have happened by means of an open selection required by authorizing of Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenjuk for Civil Service and Ministry of Social Policy before September 15.
18 applicants participated in this selection. One of the applicants Oleksij Starodubov shared details of “openness” in Facebook: “I filled the application form and took it to the National Agency of Civil Service. The procedure of “open selection” was simple and easy: a polite lady registered my application and promised I would be informed after decision of who would take that post would be made”.
The principle of applicants’ selection remained a mystery – the regulation of the tender with criterions and requirements for the applicants have not been published, interested civil organizations that represent interests of nearly 200 thousands of migrants have not been informed. In this situation 4 out 18 applicants have been chosen: Irina Kukharenko (no information), Serhiy Mokrenyuk (Deputy Head of “Demalyans” party, human rights activist from Crimea), Oleksiy Starodubov (directior of the Crimean Expert Center), Illya Shevlyak (Deputy Head of the Donetsk Regional State Administration).
It was expected that results of the selection would be known after 25th of September when the applicants should have been invited to the Cabinet of Ministers for interview, but it didn’t happen.
Realizing all the complications of coming winter and difficult situations of thousands of people, creation of Civil Service has been taken under control by coordinative board of organizations of internally displaced persons from Crimea. Serhiy Mokrenyuk explained the reasons of concern: “No one has been appointed. Employment issue meetings were not held. Cabinet of Ministers sabotages any activity on Crimea and migrants. Thousands of people left their places of residence compulsively and the state didn’t do anything to at least start solving their problems. Nor the Cabinet neither the President hasn’t even managed to create an agency that would deal with these issues, let alone solving problems of those people”.
Attempts of the authority to hide any information regarding this issue also say about intentional sabotage. Performing the decision of Coordinative Board of IDPs, its head Vladyslav Khmil’ovskyy applied for clarifications to the National Agency for Civil Service. He said: “Neither Nataliya Hrytsak, a regulatory work and legal support department employee, responsible for acceptance of documents for the selection, nor her colleague Vitalina Kostyuk, a lawyer, who being a civil servant, for some reason, communicated with me in foreign (Russian) language, refused to say her position name and surname and also promised to call security because of my persistence and attempt to receive some information, nor applying to Andriy Zabolotnyy – a director of the department – haven’t helped an authorized person representing civil organizations to receive any information.
Most likely, sabotage of the Forced Migrants Civil Service creation directly depends on elections. Even the Crimean Tartars, who are represented in a ruling party, didn’t propose their candidate for the position of the Head because of unknown reasons. On the eve of elections no one wants to deal with unpopular decisions, keeping to promotion only. “Even now the one who will be appointed as the head will get into a complicated situation. Winter is already here, but no one thought of dealing with migrants’ problems. Already today we are on the edge of a humanitarian disaster” – considers Serhij Mokrenyuk.
It is quite possible that after elections the situation will rapidly be solved, but even today the transparency of head position appointment arouses big doubts. Reforming of the government may bring to positioning of “right” people on the new positions, including such important one. But government refuses to answer what the immigrants are to do with it.
