Poor families to get social aid calculated according to monthly incomes as from October
The Parliament passed the Law on social aid in final reading on Friday. The document aims at insures a minimally guaranteed monthly income, by providing social aid established in conformity with the average monthly income of a family and its need for social assistance.
The draft introduces a new notion - guaranteed monthly minimum income, which is to be established by the Government. It will be computed on the basis of economic indexes as the minimum salary, the minimum pension. The social assistance the family will get will represent the difference between the guaranteed monthly minimum income and the actual monthly income of a family.
The draft provides that the assistance will be granted to the whole family and not to each member. The aid will be supplied to poor families where all the adult members correspond at least to one of the following situations: reached the retirement age, have disability degrees, are registered unemployed, nurse a child smaller than 3, nurse a 1st degree disability member of the family, nurse a disabled child or a person older than 75, study full-time and are younger than 23.
Families having at least one disabled will benefit of this type of aid starting from 1 October 2008, for families nursing small children – starting from 1 January 2009, while the other beneficiaries will get the aid starting from 1 July 2009. The assistance will be established for a period not longer than 2 years, and will be reviewed once in six months. .
The money will be distributed by the Social Insurance National House, though banks. The Social Protection, Family and Child Ministry will create a spcial “Social Inspection” which will responsible for applying this law.
Now all the financial assistance is granted in case of belonging to certain social categories, and in providing the social assistance no attention is paid to the living standard and needs of solicitors. The most significant social aid is granted to pay for utilities, being distributed to 11 categories encompassing 262,000 beneficiaries.
Several studies point out that establishing the compensations on the principles of belonging to a certain category does not insure streamlining the aid towards the poorest.