The Cabinet of Ministers has allocated UAH 169 million to pay wage arrears to miners throughout Ukraine, said Maksym Tkachenko, the deputy head of the Servant of the People faction.

"Today I've met with Ruslan Horbenko [member of the Servant of the People] in the Cabinet of Ministers. We met with Orzhel and Honcharuk too. They voiced information that they had allocated UAH 169 million to pay off the payments to the miners. Today, the Finance Ministry has sent this amount and coal companies should receive funds and start paying employees within 24 hours," Tkachenko said in a comment to Interfax-Ukraine.

He noted that it is about paying off wage arrears at coal associations across the country.

"This amount, as we were told, should be enough to pay off 80% of salary payments for December," the parliamentarian added.

As reported, Head of the Independent Trade Union of Miners of Ukraine Mykhailo Volynets, citing the Energy and Environmental Protection Ministry of Ukraine, said that as of December 12 wage arrears at coal mining enterprises in Ukraine amounted to UAH 1.072 billion.

On December 14, President Zelensky thanked the Finance Ministry for allocating UAH 1 billion to pay the salary and for repaying the wage arrears to miners following the introduction of amendments to the 2019 state budget by the Verkhovna Rada.

The national budget for 2020 foresees UAH 3.5 billion in state financing for the coal mining industry.