- The bill on pension reform regarding restrictions on the maximum amount of pensions, including to those who have already received them, contradicts the Constitution of Ukraine, Verkhovna Rada Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn has said.
"The government proposed limiting upper pensions not only to those who register pensions, which contradicts the constitution and a Constitutional Court ruling," he told reporters in Livadia on Friday.
Lytvyn said that this meant that people who are already receiving pensions would get them at least halved.
"I think that we should exclude this clause [from the bill]. If there is a constitution, we must implement it, and if there is a Constitutional Court ruling, it must be implemented," he said.
He said that if such a provision was passed in the law, there could be a chain reaction, and "then they will encroach on the social rights of many other strata of the population in the same way."
Lytvyn also said that the decision for this provision not to be in the law would not provoke enthusiasm in the public.
In his opinion, the issue of including a bill on pension reform on the agenda of the parliament's session will be resolved at the next plenary week, which starts on Tuesday, June 14.
Lytvyn also noted that the bill on pension reform "has a lot of the positions that people need and that are necessary for the predictable development of the state."
The new bill on pension reform proposed by the Ukrainian government includes 11 innovations. In particular, it is proposed that the maximum amount of a pension be limited to ten living wages (at present - UAH 7,640). Such a provision, as proposed in the bill, will be applied to payments that have already been assigned.
The Regions Party supported the proposal to restrict pensions to ten living wages, as envisaged in the bill on pension reform.
Livadia, June 3 (Interfax-Ukraine)
