Chapter 1. Observing social rights Pursuant to the Action Plan for Implementation of the Strategic Areas of the Commissioner’s Activities in 2019, the Commissioner monitored the observance of the constitutional rights of citizens to timely and full remuneration in the context of decentralization, in particular through monitoring visits to public authorities and local authorities of Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Zaporizhia oblasts and the city of Kyiv, as well as to the central executive authorities – the Ministry of Energy and Coal and State Property Fund of Ukraine. The findings of monitoring of how the local authorities exercise their powers on controlling the repayment of wage arrears have shown that measures are being taken at the local level to ensure the reduction and prevention of wage arrears. At the same time, given that the main debtors are state-owned enterprises subordinated to central executive authorities and insolvent enterprises, measures taken by local authorities do not yield significant results. In October 2019, the Commissioner sent a request to the Prime Minister of Ukraine to take urgent effective measures to ensure the constitutional right of citizens to receive timely and full remuneration for their work. Upon the instructions of the Prime Minister of Ukraine, the Ministry of Social Policy provided the response that proves that the Government had not taken the necessary measures to repay the wage arrears. Instead, it provided the statistical data that indicate a progressive increase in wage arrears. Neither in 2018 nor in 2019 the meeting of the Commission on the repayment of arrears of wages, pensions, scholarships and other social benefits took place. The recommendations and proposals provided in the 2018 Annual Report of the Commissioner to address the problem of wage arrears were not taken into account by the Government. Observance of the right of employees of coal-mining enterprises to receive timely remuneration for work Commissioner keeps the issue of payment of wage arrears to employees of coal-mining enterprises on her watch list constantly. Systemic violations of payroll deadline contribute to social tension among the staff of mines and cause protests. The Commissioner sent repeated requests to the Prime Minister of Ukraine, the Ministry of Energy and Coal and the State Labour Service to ensure sustainable operation of the coal industry, to provide state financial support for the technical re-equipment of mines, as well as to fully pay wages to miners and to promptly repay the existing arrears. The monitoring carried out in the Ministry of Energy and Coal proved that no effective measures are taken to ensure repayment of wage arrears to the employees of coal mining enterprises subordinated to the Ministry. In particular, the Ministry did not intensify the activities of the Temporary Commission 18 Information of the State Statistics Service of Ukraine, http://ukrstat.org/uk/operativ/menu/menu_u/zp.htm. 41 CHAPTER 1 Region-wise, the most significant increase in wage arrears in 2019 was observed in Dnipropetrovsk (2.6 times), Ternopil (2 times), Zhytomyr (+77.9%), Lviv (+77.7%), Volyn (+61.1%), Ivano-Frankivsk (+58.8%), Kirovohrad oblasts (+48.3%) and the city of Kyiv (+39.1%)18.