MOSCOW. Oct 4 (Interfax-AVN) - Governor of the Kostroma region Viktor Shershunov applied to Chairman of the State Duma lower house of parliament Gennady Seleznyov with a request to speed up authorisation of an increase in servicemen's salaries and improvement of laws on military pensions.
The monitoring of social and economic situation of servicemen, retired servicemen and their family members, held in the Kostroma region since 2000, exposed two major problems.
First, military pensions paid to servicemen's widows are extremely low and make an average of RUR769 (USD26) a month. The figure is far below the sustenance level for pensioners in the region.
Second, servicemen's allowances are inadmissibly low too, the governor believes. It affects the authority of military service and causes a mass drain of young officers from the Armed Forces.
Provision of housing to retiring officers has effectively stopped, Shershunov said in his request. Budget financing of housing construction for retired servicemen has been halted, which makes it impossible to implement the federal government's resolution on provision of gratuitous financial aid for housing purchase and reimbursement for renting apartments to servicemen and ex-servicemen.
The governor urged Seleznyov to take into account the critical financial situation of servicemen and their growing dissatisfaction with the level of social and legal security.