Jubilee on Credit

Prime Minister Valery Pustovoitenko has ordered the Ministry of Finance to grant Hr 700,000 for celebrating of the eightieth anniversary of the Ukrainian National Academy of Science on December 2 (some months after the actual anniversary - Ed.). Pustovoitenko was also entrusted to pay off the academy's current debt by December.

Among measures slated for the festivities are a general meeting of the Academy workers and a solemn concert in the Ukraine Palace. In honor of the jubilee a book will also appear, Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences - Eightieth Anniversary, along with a series of films, commemorative medal, and postal envelopes. Hr 220,000 from the academy's budget has already been spent to prepare for the fete.

The chairman of the Kyiv regional committee of academy's trade union Anatoly Moskalenko told The Day that hungry researchers might picket the Cabinet on the jubilee day. Incidentally, besides its Hr 20 million current financial debt, the salary debt is just as big - salaries are two years in arrears. Taking into account these debts, and also multiple promises to pay them off, all of which the government failed has to keep, the trade union committee considers loud celebration of the jubilee to be IMMORAL. The payment of salary arrears by the jubilee is not likely to warm the savants' hearts. The Cabinet of Ministers did not announce the science a priority direction, and the next such jubilee will come only after a decade, if at all.