President's decree streamlines Cabinet (08/04/96)

President's decree streamlines Cabinet

by Marta Kolomayets
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - President Leonid Kuchma issued a decree on July 27 streamlining the Cabinet of Ministers.

The main points of the decree include the liquidation of the Chornobyl Ministry (Ministry for the Protection of the Population from the Aftermath of the Accident at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant) and the Civil Defense Headquarters, which are now merged and known as the Ministry for Emergency Situations.

The decree also dissolves the Ministry for Youth and Sports, the Committee for Juvenile Affairs at the Cabinet of Ministers and the Committee in charge of Women, Maternity and Childhood under the aegis of the president of Ukraine and in its place creates a Family and Youth Ministry. A new State Committee on Physical Culture and Sports will be established.

It also forms a new Information Ministry, by merging the Information and Press Ministry and Ukrinform, a state news agency.

According to the decree, the State Committee for Science, Technology and Industrial Policy, the National Agency for Maritime Research and Technologies under the Cabinet of Ministers, as well as the Ukrainian Service for Special Information and Technology have been eliminated, and a new Science and Technology Ministry has been established in their place. The State Committee on State Secrets and the State Service for Technical Protection of Information are merged into one State Committee for State Secrets and Technical Protection of Information.

The presidential decree also provides for the establishment of the Ukrainian State Committee for Nationalities and Migration to replace the Ministry for Nationalities and Migration, which has been dissolved.

Government officials told Interfax-Ukraine that smaller ministries and committees will be created in place of those eliminated by the decree.

The State Committee on Gardening, Viticulture and the Wine-Making Industry will merge with the Ministry of Agriculture and Foods of Ukraine.

The Presidential Committee on AIDS will now be subordinated to the Ministry of Health.

The State Aviation Transport Department of Ukraine and the Committee for the Use of Air Space are now subordinated to the Ukrainian Transport Ministry.

The Committee for Social Protection of Servicemen under the Cabinet of Ministers now reports to Ukraine's Defense Ministry.

The National Committee for the Return of Cultural Values to Ukraine is now under the authority of Ukraine's Ministry of Culture and Arts.

And, the National Committee for Radiation Protection of the Population will now report to the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Nuclear Safety of Ukraine.

"This decree will both slash the number of government officials and make our economy more manageable," Serhiy Kutsy of the presidential press service told the Associated Press.

"It fulfills the president's promises and makes a real step toward market reforms," he told the news agency.

Before the summer President Kuchma had promised to cut down government personnel by 20 percent (several thousand people) and to the Cabinet. He did so before he left for vacation in Foros, on the Crimean peninsula, in the resort area where former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was spending his summer holiday in August 1991, while Soviet hard-liners planned their failed coup.

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