Ukrainian presidential administration says specialists from business should be attracted to civil service

Kyiv, September 24 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The preparation of the draft law on the temporarily attraction of specialists from business to civil service is being finished, Deputy Head of Ukrainian Presidential Administration Dmitry Shymkiv has said.

There is a need to attract specialists from business to the posts of heads of state departments," he said at a briefing in Kyiv on Tuesday.

He said that special authorized funds will be created, which will accept resumes from candidates after the opening of the relevant vacancies in the administrative agencies and check them for compliance with the requirements and the absence of a conflict of interests, and then the fund will submit a list of checked candidates to the state agency and the agency will make an independent decision.

"Then the candidates are dismissed from the pervious place of job, a trilateral agreement between the administrative agency, the fund and the employee is signed," Shymkiv said.

He also said that the obligatory element of the agreement should be the tasks and key indicators for the employees.

The agreement will have extra charges to the salary, which will be paid by the authorized fund to the employees. The funds will be authorized by the Cabinet of Ministers or the Presidential Administration and will be managed by leading experts, representatives of international and Ukrainian organizations and they will be financed using donor aid and charitable contributions from individuals and companies.

Shymkiv said that people from business will be temporarily attracted to the civil service for the period of no more than three years, and the reduction of the term to one year or 18 months is being discussed now.

"Then the employee is to decide if he or she stays at the civil service or returns to business," he said.

Shymkiv paid attention to the fact that the level of extra charges to the employees from the authorized fund cannot exceed the level of its salary at the previous job and the average market level.

He said that Ukrainian citizens no younger than 26 years with higher education who did not work in the civil service for the past six years and who have the income declarations for the said period could be hired using the above-mentioned scheme.

He said that the similar practice is used in Australia, Britain, Canada and many developing countries, in particular, Georgia.

Shymkiv said that representatives of famous consulting and audit companies were involved in the drawing up of the draft law.

"It's important to say that this is a temporary tool. We foresee that it will be canceled as soon as we have a proper law on the civil service," he said.