Chelyabinsk Region’s additional budget revenues amounted to 7.536 billion RUR in January-July 2007, Governor Petr Sumin announced at a meeting on August 9, 2007; he said the money would be spent on social welfare programs.

‘All the daycare and nursery school teachers are going to get 1,000 RUR more in terms of salary beginning from September 1, 2007; their assistants are going to get a 500-ruble pay rise. This year, we’ll need 120 million RUR to make this happen. Then, the operating personnel employed by the executive authorities will be getting 15% more starting September 2007, and that employed by the local governments will get the same rise in December 2007. We are also planning to offer incidental allowances to all the public sector workers; nearly 400 million RUR were allotted for this. All the pensioners are to be given some gifts on the Senior Citizen’s Day; this is going to cost 395 million RUR. 36,000 children who are starting school this year come from families with many children, and parents of each such child are to get 3,000 RUR to help them buy school books, clothes, etc. We’ve become one of Russia’s first regions to eliminate all the debts we had in terms of paying allowances to people with children; moreover, these allowances are to be raised from 120 RUR to 200 RUR a month in two-parent families and from 200 to 400 RUR in single-parent families,’ the Governor said.

‘In addition, we’ve allocated 15 million RUR on helping people with disabilities and veterans of the Great Patriotic War remodel their homes, 700 million RUR on helping farmers lease agricultural equipment, 900 million RUR to help the housing maintenance and utilities services buy the equipment they need, 120 million RUR to have new roads constructed and the old ones repaired, and almost 140 million RUR to provide natural gas supply to the region’s population,’ Mr. Sumin said.

‘Next year’s budget is already being considered by our legislative chamber, and this budget exceeds this year’s one in all the spending aspects. 1 billion RUR each is intended for kindergartens and daycares, repairing the city roads, and buying public transport vehicles. We do try to make our budget social welfare-oriented,’ the Governor noted.