Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko has signed a bill adopted earlier by the Verkhovna Rada, which repeals the provision on the reduction of the number of prosecutors starting from 2018.
Law No. 7160 on amending the law “On the Prosecutor’s Office” optimizing the number of employees of the prosecutor’s office, which was passed on December 7 and signed by the parliament speaker on December 12, was submitted to the president on December 26, according to the official website of the Ukrainian parliament.
As reported, the law excludes the provision that from January 1, 2018 the number of prosecutors should be reduced to 10,000. Only the part of this article, which says that the number of employees of the prosecutor’s office should not exceed 15,000, remains.
According to an explanatory note to the bill, the provision of the article on reducing the number of prosecutors appeared in July 2015. The accompanying document says that as of October 2017, the number of prosecutors is 11,313 of the total of 15,000 employees.
The authors of the bill explained that if the number of prosecutors is cut to 10,000, as the law suggests, starting from 2018, that is by 1,313, this will inevitably lead to an unjustified increase of the load on the remaining prosecutors.
After the vote, the press secretary of Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, Larysa Sarhhan, said that she welcomes this decision.
