Parliament hopefully rectifies unemployment anomaly for villagers

The Verkhovna Rada has passed a Law “On amendments to some laws of Ukraine on employment of members of individual village enterprises”. It amends the laws “On the employment of the population” and “On individual village enterprise”.  The Verkhovna Rada’s website states that the amendments are aimed at reinstating the constitutional rights of citizens in this category to social protection when unemployed.

The law states that people who are self-employed, including businesspeople, those working in creative fields, members of cooperatives, farmers and members of their family taking part in production, as well as members of individual village enterprises in cases envisaged by the Law “On individual village enterprise” are considered part of the workforce.

As reported here at the end of February, villagers had begun encountering problems when they tried to register as unemployed following the passing of an anti-crisis law on 13 January stipulated that villagers owning land (plots of land from disbanded kolkhozes) were members of these “individual village enterprises” and therefore considered unemployed.

Since today’s law introduces amendments and it is stated that this is to reinstate constitutional rights, presumably villagers are now allowed to register unemployed, however it is not directly stated in the parliamentary report.