Rustam Minnikhanov takes part in meeting of Presidential Commission

On May 7, in Moscow, Acting Tatarstan President Rustam Minnikhanov took part in a meeting of the Commission for Monitoring Targeted Socioeconomic Development Indicators of the Russian Federation chaired by the Russian President Vladimir Putin. The agenda focused on the implementation of the May 2012 Presidential Executive Orders in the social sphere: healthcare, education and labour remuneration.

Opening the meeting, Putin stressed that the when assessing quality of the implementation of the May Executive Orders it is important to look at the changes in people’s lives, but not to the number of resolutions, documents, and laws passed.

Addressing the regions, the President noted the need to establish strict control over the optimisation of public organisations, especially in remote and rural areas. “It is inadmissible to reduce access to socially significant services, when under the guise of optimisation we reduce the number of beds in hospitals, the number of rural health posts, ambulance stations, cultural centres and facilities providing extracurricular education for children,” he said.

Also, Putin touched upon the topic of the development of preschool education. “I have to say that we have made significant progress here. Additional preschools have been made available for over 1 million children. Next year practically all the regions will be able to provide preschool education for children aged 3 to 7,” he went on to say.

"I would like to stress right away that we must maintain the levels we have already achieved, for instance in salary levels, and not allow any fall-back", he continued.

“We are still failing to utilise the key reserve of economic development, which is labour productivity growth. The year-end growth in 2014 was only 0.5 percent, while in the first quarter of this year it even went down,” Putin criticized the work done to increase labour productivity.

Labour and Social Protection Minister Maxim Topilin, Healthcare Minister Veronika Skvortsova and Education and Science Minister Dmitry Livanov presented their reports.