Putin answers questions on social services and welfare payments

The Ministry of Finance considers benefits for pensioners caring for the disabled

22.01.2020

The Russian President has met with community leaders to answer questions about social services and welfare payments including the support available to people with disabilities.

Yelena Klochko, Chair of the All-Russian Organisation for the Parents of Disabled Children (VORDI), put to Putin the suggestion that the carers of children with disabilities should receive index-linked payments regardless of whether they are in paid employment.  She asked: ‘Is it right that parents who set up NGOs do not receive any form of income support?’  The President agreed that it was unfair to withhold support intended to cover disability costs from people simply because they are in work or receiving a pension or unemployment benefit and stated: ‘The Ministry of Finance is considering how to change the current system.  Changes will be made; the ministry is currently working out the cost implications.’

President Putin also made the following statements:

  • He agreed that legislation should be passed to approve access to social services for people who take on the care of children while their parents are having treatment and cannot care for them themselves.  The president was responding to a question from Marina Aksenova, Director of the Children’s Charity ‘Sunny City’, who suggested that NGOs should be able to provide the necessary care.
  • He highlighted the need to switch to a centralised system of medical payments for the whole country, while at the same time ‘ensuring that separate awards and top-up payments are not lost’.  A uniform system should put an end to the current disparity in payments between one region and the next.
  • He suggested that the pilot project on long-term care currently underway would be rolled out across the country.  He stated: ‘By the autumn proposals for extending these arrangements across the country will be presented.  We are not abandoning the work we have done to date, just reviewing how the pilot project has progressed to date.’
  • He confirmed that in 2020 an additional 3 billion roubles will be made available to fund grant payments to NGOs on an intra-regional level.

Source: https://www.asi.org.ru/news/2020/01/22/putin-vstrecha-lipetsk/

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