In an article in Russia's largest tabloid paper presidential candidate prime minister Vladimir Putin's plans for Russia's future promised boosting payment to public sector workers and children. This was the first article published in the tabloid press. With previous articles apparently aimed at middle-class voters and promising reform, this article - with a view to elections looming March 4 - promises more cash for public sector workers, families and pensioners.
Putin says he will double average salaries for lecturers, teachers, doctors and cultural workers by the end of the new presidential term in 2018. Doctors, teachers, professors should get enough at their main job not to seek earnings on the side, he writes.
He promises continued growth in pensions, which he said regained their Soviet-era level in 2010. Faced with a growing deficit in Russia's pension fund, Putin says he is against increasing the pension age - which is only 55 years old for women - but he is in favour of expanding the investment component in pension payments.
Putin also promises more cash for families with an eye to improving the country's demographic problems. The sense of the situation is evident: without implementing a large-scale, long-term project of demographic development we risk turning into an empty space globally, whose destiny will be decided by others, Putin writes.
But the bulk of the lengthy article does comprise proposals for reform of the public services crucial to the vast majority of Russians who lack the cash to opt out and into the private sector.
Here Putin identifies the problem as not the level of state expenditure - but the effectiveness of government spending.
"The key problem of social policy in Russia is not the volume of resources which we direct at social tasks, but the effectiveness and the targeting of measures implemented," Putin writes.
"We need to change this situation in the coming years, eliminate waste in the social sector, when resources are spent uselessly, and not directed at those who desperately need them but to people who could easily get by without them; when through inertia we support institutions without paying attention to the effectiveness of their services for citizens; when we place the interests of those who work in the social sphere higher than the interests of those for whom they are working."
In this connection Putin specifically called for a quality audit of Russia's booming higher education sector. "There are numerous colleges and universities on the market, including state institutions, that directly violate the right to receive fundamental knowledge," he writes. Putin said the existing regulatory body was ineffective and called for an audit to be conducted 2012-2014 by leading universities, specialists from the Russian Academy of Sciences and also international experts.
Keywords: Russia, Government, Politics - Russia News - Russia
In an article in Russia's largest tabloid paper presidential candidate prime minister Vladimir Putin's plans for Russia's future promised boosting payment to public sector workers and children.
This was the first article published in the tabloid press. With previous articles apparently aimed at middle-class voters and promising reform, this article - with a view to elections looming March 4 - promises more cash for public sector workers, families and pensioners.
Putin says he will double average salaries for lecturers, teachers, doctors and cultural workers by the end of the new presidential term in 2018. Doctors, teachers, professors should get enough at their main job not to seek earnings on the side, he writes.
He promises continued growth in pensions, which he said regained their Soviet-era level in 2010. Faced with a growing deficit in Russia's pension fund, Putin says he is against increasing the pension age - which is only 55 years old for women - but he is in favour of expanding the investment component in pension payments.
Putin also promises more cash for families with an eye to improving the country's demographic problems. The sense of the situation is evident: without implementing a large-scale, long-term project of demographic development we risk turning into an empty space globally, whose destiny will be decided by others, Putin writes.
But the bulk of the lengthy article does comprise proposals for reform of the public services crucial to the vast majority of Russians who lack the cash to opt out and into the private sector.
Here Putin identifies the problem as not the level of state expenditure - but the effectiveness of government spending.
"The key problem of social policy in Russia is not the volume of resources which we direct at social tasks, but the effectiveness and the targeting of measures implemented," Putin writes.
"We need to change this situation in the coming years, eliminate waste in the social sector, when resources are spent uselessly, and not directed at those who desperately need them but to people who could easily get by without them; when through inertia we support institutions without paying attention to the effectiveness of their services for citizens; when we place the interests of those who work in the social sphere higher than the interests of those for whom they are working."
In this connection Putin specifically called for a quality audit of Russia's booming higher education sector. "There are numerous colleges and universities on the market, including state institutions, that directly violate the right to receive fundamental knowledge," he writes. Putin said the existing regulatory body was ineffective and called for an audit to be conducted 2012-2014 by leading universities, specialists from the Russian Academy of Sciences and also international experts.