MOSCOW, October 24 (AVN) - The security and defence committee of the Federation Council upper house of parliament on Tuesday discussed the draft house resolution "Concerning Measures for Improvement of Legal and Social-Economic State of Servicemen, Citizens Retired from Military Service, and their Family Members," the Military News Agency learned.
The committee session was attended by representatives of almost all law-enforcement agencies and the Finance Ministry. In their speeches, they stressed that monetary allowance paid to an Armed Forces colonel only equals the subsistence level in remote Russian regions.
Allowances paid to servicemen are 1.5 to two times lower than those paid to civilians in respective positions of the state service, though they were equal yet in 1993, the officials stressed. Besides, there is a considerable gap between officers of various law-enforcement agencies. A regular army officer receives 25 percent less than the one serving in the Federal Security Service (FSB) and twice less than the one in the Federal Body Guard Service.
Defence Ministry officials said their agency is not satisfied with the ways of realisation of servicemen's benefits proposed by the Ministries of Finance and Labour. According to the Finance Ministry's concept, compensations of expenses on rent, public transportation and communication are to be paid by the serviceman's unit. For this purpose, the Armed Forces will have to employ almost 10,000 additional bookkeepers.
The Defence Ministry proposes to effect payments through administrations of the component parts of the federation. For example, compensations for communication charges can be paid by means of reducing profit tax on transport enterprises.
The committee session once again confirmed that the interested ministries and departments are far from consensus in the mechanism of benefits realisation. In order to come to an agreement, it was decided to test realisation schemes in several component parts of the federation. The committee decided to continue working on the draft resolution and submit it for consideration of the house only after all disagreements are hammered out.