Medvedev Axing 10% of Civil Servant Staff

May 14, 2014

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has asked the Finance Ministry to reduce the number of civil servants by 10 percent, an order published Wednesday on the cabinet website showed.

The ministry will be asked to present their proposals to the government on June 1, the order said.

The idea of introducing a 10 percent cut on personnel was first raised by Medvedev in April, who noted that Russia needed "a modern, compact and effective state personnel oriented at people's requests," Itar-Tass reported.

Civil servant jobs were last cut in 2011, when Medvedev signed a decree pledging to reduce the number of public servants by 20 percent over the next three years.

Despite the decree, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said last October that the number of civil servants had grown by 100,000 between 2008-2013, RIA Novosti reported.

According to the Federal State Statistics Service, the number of employees of state authorities and local self-government bodies totaled 1,548,062 people in 2013, Itar-Tass reported.

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