The personal assistants from Chisinau in March will receive a fixed amount of 5,000 lei in financial assistance from the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection, offered with the support of development partners and donors. The persons will be notified by SMS of the possibility of collecting the payment. The Ministry of Labor and Social Protection said the aid is intended for all the personal assistants from Chisinau municipality whose employment relationships were modified by reducing the workload or were terminated by the General Division for the Protection of Children’s Rights and the General Medical and Social Assistance Division, IPN reports.

The approximately 1,200 personal assistants will also receive financial aid in April, depending on the extent to which the workload was reduced or the full termination of employment relationships.

Payments will be made without the need to file an application, but with further assessments to determine to what extent each personal assistant has been affected. The money will be available from the post offices of “Poșta Moldovei”.

With the support of the development partners, a support program was initiated in December. As part of this, a one-off payment of 5,000 lei was offered to 3,019 families that care for and supervise children with severe disabilities and 7,195 families with people with disabilities, employed in the social service “Personal Assistance”. The personal assistants from Chisinau also benefited from these payments.

Hundreds of personal assistants in Chisinau, especially of retired age, were laid off, and those who Hundreds of personal assistants in Chisinau, especially of retirement age, were laid off, and those who remained had their wages halved after the municipal authorities announced that they no longer had money to pay them and would not hire new personal assistants who submitted applications. The City Hall accused the central authorities of not including Chisinau municipality in the social assistance reform “Restart” through which the Personal Assistance service from January 1, 2024 has been financed with state budget funds, while the personal assistants were transferred under the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection. The central authorities invoked, in turn, that Chisinau municipality and the administrative-territorial unit of Gagauzia have sufficient possibilities to finance the salaries of personal assistants from their own incomes, but also from special-purpose transfers from the state budget.