Yatsenyuk: Companies must bear criminal responsibility for debts on wages

"That company, which avoids the payment of wages, must bear both administrative and criminal responsibility," said Yatsenyuk during a "10 minutes with Prime Minister" TV show.

"We expect the Ukrainian trade unions to take the workers’ side and help the government to recover the arrears of wages and will support our position on increasing the minimum wage, pensions and social standards", - he stressed.

He stressed that "the overall reform of the wage system" is now on the Cabinet’s agenda.

"It lacks justice. Therefore, the government, together with the president and the parliamentary coalition will be working on the new reformed system of remuneration for all Ukrainians," said Yatsenyuk.

He also said he had instructed the Ministry of Social Policy together with the heads of regional state administrations and law enforcement agencies to urgently convene commissions on payment of arrears of wages and do everything to ensure that workers “receive their wages in full."

As UNIAN reported earlier, the Ministry of Social Policy will seek for administrative and criminal prosecution of heads of companies that do not pay the arrears of wages to employees, said the press service of the Ministry of Social Policy citing Minister Pavlo Rozenko.

Earlier Rozenko said that the arrears of wages in Ukraine reached UAH 2 billion in part due to unscrupulous employers.

Read alsoUkraine plans to raise wages and pensionsAccording to the State statistics service, wage arrears in Ukraine increased in June by 5.8% compared with May, and amounted UAH 1.9 billion as of July 1. Compared with the beginning of the year, wage arrears grew by 45.1%. Debt of economically active enterprises is nearly UAH 1.44 billion, or 75% of the total debt.  Regionally, the largest volumes of debt were recorded in the regions of Donetsk (UAH 423 million), Luhansk (UAH 451 million), Kharkiv (UAH 162 million) and Kyiv (UAH 122 million).