Ukraine will carry out a major reform of its law enforcement agencies to improve their effectiveness and ensure the country's security, President Petro Poroshenko said here Friday.
"I have initiated perhaps the most ambitious law enforcement reform in the history of Ukraine," Xinhua quoted Poroshenko as saying during a ceremony in preparation for the upcoming Day of Ukrainian Police.
The reform will be implemented to root out corruption in the country's law enforcement agencies and regain the trust of people to police, Poroshenko said.
Under the reform plan, Ukrainian authorities are mulling slashing the number of police officers to about 150,000 by 2016 from the current 178,000 and increase salaries for the law enforcement staff.
The reform, which is expected to be completed by 2017, also envisages that the Ukrainian police will change its name and would be called "politsia" instead of its Soviet-styled name "militsia".
Ukraine marks the Police Day Dec 20 each year.
