The acting Russian President, Vladimir Putin, has announced that the minimum wage for public sector employees is to be increased by twenty percent from the first of April.

Mr Putin told a conference in Moscow of educational workers that the state had not given adequate attention to the material needs of its employees and said the pay rise was only a first step.

He dismissed suggestions that the announcement was influenced by the forthcoming presidential elections on March the twenty-sixth. Earlier this week Mr Putin promised that state pensions would also go up by twenty percent.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service