Scholars Demand Decent Funding

On early October 30 virtually every research institute opened to see at least a dozen employees missing from work. With placards in their hands professors and research assistants crowded near the Cabinet of Ministers’ building demanding a meeting with Volodymyr Semynozhenko, vice premier for humanitarian issues. Watching the makeshift pickets, the police could only smile. Most of them remember that the scientists came here last year and the year before last when the budget was in process. However, each time emotional slogans and irate rhymes fell on deaf ears of the government, say, money is in short supply, all you can do is wait. Nothing changed this Wednesday. Over 300 pickets demanded financing of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences in keeping with the planned budget allocations for 2002, higher salaries and payment of back pay amounting to UAH 53,041,000. Most dazzling were placards carried by employees of the Sarcophagus interdisciplinary Science and Technology Center. It will be recalled that under a Cabinet of Ministers’ decree this establishment has been charged with conducting research and providing maintenance to operations aimed at ensuring radiation safety at the fourth power unit of the Chornobyl nuclear power plant. But the funding shortfall blamed on the Cabinet of Ministers resulted in a September UAH 1 million back pay for center employees and another half a million for October. Sarcophagus workers warned the government that such genocide of nuclear engineers forebodes a second Chornobyl and that underfunding of such an establishment is synonymous with a crime.

According to Anatoly Shyrokov, leader of the Academy of Sciences trade union, under law a minimum of 1.7% of GDP should go to science. This year a mere 0.33% has been earmarked, but even this amount has not been paid in full. Under the draft budget for 2003 science will receive even less, 0.31%. By comparison, budget allocations for Russian science will increase by 20%. In the years of independence the number of scientists has dropped by over half. Against 90,000 in 1990, today there are hardly 40,000 scholars and scientists in Ukraine. A young specialist at a research institute deserves to be included in the book of extinct species. Graduates of the Kyiv Shevchenko National University say they would take up science for no less than $200 a month. Currently, specialists with degrees and prize laureates receive no more than UAH 400. Recognizing the authority of Ukrainian scientists, westerners still are wary of their research and inventions, claiming the results obtained with equipment built in the 1960s cannot be possibly accurate. As a rule, Western institutions only want to lure our scientists, offering them salaries often by far less than those paid to their own employees. Those who ventured to stay here have a chance to test the Darwinian law on themselves, fighting for survival. Pickets half-jocularly said they could earn some cash selling hot coffee here. Incidentally, the issue of cold is one of the most burning for them. Cloakrooms in many research institutes are good for nothing. Heating has been cut off for debts and scientists have no choice but to fathom the mysteries of science wearing gloves and overcoats. Institutes try to scrape by as best they can. For instance, the research institute of semiconductor physics runs partly on a self- financing basis. When they manufacture, say, a gauge for some company the institute will buy something in return. Fundamental research is out of the question. Engineer Larysa Sviatohor says that her institute, once a European leader in its field of expertise, is turning into a shadow business that can satisfy only short-term needs. Russian zoologists have extended a helping hand to their Ukrainian colleagues, who have forgotten when they last went on an expedition, sending them literature and materials required for their work. At the same time the scientists believe that they can help the country weather the crisis, were they given the required equipment to conduct research that could translate into millions for budget coffers.