Russia’s Interior Ministry Reform
Reform of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Photo from www.ipicture.ru
On December 24, 2010, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree on the Interior Ministry development.
The decree reportedly provides financial, personnel and organizational changes at the Interior Ministry.
One of the objectives of the Interior Ministry reform is to increase the salaries of the Ministry employees due to the downsizing of staff. "I believe we should shrink", commented Medvedev on the Internal Affairs personnel strength and said that he hoped by raising wages to attract up to date, responsible and efficient staff to police work.
The issue of the MIA reform has been discussed in Russia for a long time. On the eve of Medvedev's speech, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said that one of the components of the reform of the Interior Ministry, namely, a complete transition of the Ministry to federal funding, is difficult to implement because of its high cost. According to Kudrin, this step requires the allocation of an additional 200 billion rubles from the budget.
