Moscow police have laid off 7,000 employees in compliance with President Vladimir Putin's order last month to cut 10 percent of the Interior Ministry payroll, Moscow police chief Anatoly Yakunin said in an interview with state-run newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta on Tuesday.
“We have already cut some 7,000 employees — the 10 percent [we were] ordered to cut,” he was cited by the newspaper as saying.
The cuts will have no impact on safety in Moscow, Yakunin added, as only several dozen field officers were laid off, the rest were administrative and unfilled positions.
“Mostly we cut the unfilled positions. It would be wrong to fire actual employees when we had some 4,000 unfilled positions,” he said.
The Moscow police payroll used to include almost 70,000 employees, but now has only 62,000, the police chief concluded.
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