MOSCOW, May 21 (RAPSI, Maria Petrova) – Low salaries in Russian courts remain a major problem, Supreme Commercial Court Chairman Anton Ivanov said Tuesday at a judicial council meeting in Moscow.

The problem still persists, despite all the efforts to change the situation, Ivanov said.

The personnel turnover in the Moscow Commercial Court reaches 90% a year, and most people quit because of low salaries, according to Ivanov. Meanwhile, the workload in courts is incomparably higher than what it was a decade ago, he added.

“The number of court employees fired after various disciplinary offenses has grown sharply,” he said. Ivanov believes that this is related to that fact that people are not keen to stay in their jobs because of the low pay.

The Upper house approved a law stipulating the increase of wages for judges depending on their qualification class, degree and knowledge of foreign languages last December.

Deputy Finance Minister Tatyana Nesterenko predicted that the average wage of commercial court judges will increase from 132,000 rubles ($4,200) to 150,000 rubles ($4,773) in accordance with the new law.