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In 2020, the government allocated only 9% of the needed funds to buy up individual protection gear for schools

Last year, the Cabinet of Ministers allocated 539.5 million hryvnas for procuring medical masks and sanitizers to ensure safe conditions of getting secondary education. It makes 9% of the requested 6 billion hryvnas that the Ministry of Education failed to receive from the Covid-19 Response Fund.

This is what the expert organization StateWatch reports referring to the answer of the Ministry of Education on whether the establishment bought up medical masks, hand and skin sanitizers, surface disinfectants, etc. in 2020.

The Ministry of Education of Ukraine stated in its letter that 539.5 million UAH had been allocated under Order of the Cabinet of Ministers No 984 On Allocation of Funds in 2020 to Provide School Communities at Institutions of Secondary Education with Disinfectants to provide institutions of secondary education with disinfectants within the subvention from the state budget to local budgets to ensure high-quality, up-to-date and available general secondary education New Ukrainian School. The funds were reallocated from other budget programs, by cutting in particular:

  • Expenditures for the program Nation-Wide Measures in the Sphere of Education (textbooks, work-books, methodological support, online learning tools) by 77 million hryvnas.
  • Financing of academic scholarships for students, post-graduate students, doctoral students by 40 million hryvnas.
  • Financing of the program Ensuring Professional Education in Professions of National Importance by 10 million hryvnas.
  • Expenditures for the Teacher of the Year competition by 4 million hryvnas, etc.

In September of 2020, the Ministry of Education addressed the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine with a request to allocate 3 billion hryvnas from the Covid-19 Response Fund. The government, however, failed to provide the funds.

By estimates of the Ministry of Education, the total amount needed to buy up masks and disinfectants for 4 million school students and 520 thousand faculty and staff constituted 6 billion hryvnas, with a half of this amount being provided due to co-financing.

In its response to StateWatch, the Ministry of Education and Science also accentuated that material and technical support of educational institutions lies within responsibility of local government, executive bodies of respective councils in particular.