As many as 133 people died and 99 people were injured as a result of fires in Ukraine since the beginning of 2020, the State Emergency Situations Service has said.
“Some 133 people died and 99 people were injured as a result of fires in Ukraine since the beginning of 2020. More than a half of 2,268 fires broke out in citizens’ dwellings,” reads the statement.
Ukraine’s transport enterprises in January-November 2019 carried 3.9 billion people, which was 5.6% less than in the same period in 2018, the State Statistics Service has reported.
According to the report, passenger turnover for the reporting period totaled 91.1 billion passenger-kilometers, which was 3.5% more than this figure for January-November last year.
In the 11 months of 2019, some 142.2 million passengers used rail transport (including the commuter rail service), which was 2.1% less than in January-November 2018, and 1.656 billion passengers were carried by road (5.4% less), the State Statistics Service said.
Airlines increased passenger transportation by 10.5%, to 12.8 million people.
In addition, according to the State Statistics Service, in January-November, 571.5 million passengers used trams (a decrease by 7.2% compared to the same period a year earlier), 652.9 million people used the subway (a 1.8% decline), and 864 million used trolleybuses (a 7.6% decrease).
Passenger transportation by water increased by 3.5% compared to January-November 2018, to 700,000 people.
The State Statistics Service says the report does not include data from the temporarily occupied territory of Crimea, Sevastopol and certain districts in Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
The right of legislative initiative in the Ukrainian parliament, which previously belonged to the president, the Cabinet of Ministers and members of parliament, may be given to the people of Ukraine, according to the text of bill No. 1015 changing Article 93 of the Constitution of Ukraine (on the people’s legislative initiative), submitted by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on August 29.
The text of the document was posted on the Ukrainian parliament website on Friday.
The bill proposes including in Paragraph 1 of Article 93 of the Constitution the words that “the right of legislative initiative in the Verkhovna Rada belongs to the people, the president of Ukraine, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, members of parliament of Ukraine and is exercised by them in the situations and in accordance with the procedures determined by the Constitution and laws of Ukraine.”
The document proposes added to the Constitution a paragraph stating that “the law is adopted in accordance with the legislative procedure requirements determined by the Constitution and laws of Ukraine.”
According to the explanatory note attached to the bill, the purpose of the changes proposed by the bill is to ensure an effective mechanism of legislative initiative in Ukraine by broadening the list of its subjects.
The bill needs to be adopted because the list of subjects of the right of legislative initiative determined by the Constitution “is narrow and makes it impossible for the people of Ukraine as the only source of power to be such subject.”
Ukraine currently does not have a legislative mechanism for implementing the proposal to give the right of legislative initiative to the people.
Leader of the Batkivschyna party Yulia Tymoshenko believes that the draft national budget for 2019 submitted by the authorities is a budget for the destruction of the economy, since it envisages raising tariffs and freezing minimum wages and pensions, which will lead to the total impoverishment of the population and the destruction of the middle class, according to the official website of the party.
“For the first time in the history of Ukraine, wages and pensions are equal to 43% of the subsistence level. This is the budget of total poverty, saving the tariff policy that is crushing for Ukrainian families – they are increasing by 23%. This is a corrupt and destructive budget for the economy,” Tymoshenko told journalists in the parliament.
According to the leader of Batkivschyna, the minimum wages and pensions provided in the estimates in U.S. dollar terms are 1.7 times less than they were at the beginning of 2014, health care financing has been reduced by 1.6 times.
According to Tymoshenko, it is unacceptable that the budget for 2019 is based on the old tax base, with twice the higher rates than in developed countries, which significantly slows down the development of the economy.
The politician noted that if the government draft budget is adopted, “the economy’s falling, emigration of people to other countries, the destruction of the middle class will continue.”
“This budget, in essence, is a verdict to the country. I hope that the deputies will not risk voting for it,” Tymoshenko stated.
BUDGET, PEOPLE, THREATENS, UKRAINIAN ECONOMY, WELL-BEING, YULIA TYMOSHENKO
