Chernobyl victims could benefit from 850 lei monthly allowances

The Government plans to establish a monthly benefit of 850 lei for the participants in the liquidation of the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster. A draft decision to that effect has been submitted to Parliament for consideration. Although these benefits were supposed to be granted starting on 1 January 2009, MP Vasile Tarlev insisted that possibilities should be found so as to grant these benefits a year earlier, that is from January 2008. The financial assistance is to be used by the participants in the liquidation of the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster to purchase products that would contribute to eliminating radioactive particles from the body. Such a provision was included in the Law on Social Protection, adopted back in 1992, but which hasn’t been put into practice so far. The cost of the project would reach about 30 million lei yearly. Although the exact number of the potential recipients wasn’t specified, the prime-minister said that there are not too many such persons in Moldova, thus the state’s expenses would not be that high. The Expenditure Framework for 2008-2009 doesn’t provide for such expenses. The prime-minister requested that solutions be found for granting such benefits until the finalisation of the Draft State Budget Law for 2008.