Emilia Maslarova'a Idea is in Conflict with the Social Charter

Emilia Maslarova’s Idea is in Conflict with the Social Charter Emil COHEN According to official figures from the Social Assistance Agency (SAA), currently just over 40,000 people in Bulgarian receive social payments. These are people who, if one may say so, are “the bottom of the bottom”: long-term unemployed, people illiterate or barely able to read; people unable to find a job due to total lack of qualification or because of long years of unemployment which have caused them to lose any work habits and be unable to stick to any job, including one in the “grey economy”.

Here is all of it translated into the “elegant” language of Art.2, para.3 of the Law on Social Assistance (LSA): “Entitled to social assistance shall be those Bulgarian citizens, families, and co-habitation partners who, for health, age, social, or other circumstances beyond their control, are incapable to satisfy their basic living needs through their own labour or income from property ownership, or through the help of persons legally responsible for them”. A large part of those “entitled” are Roma which is, unfortunately, “natural” although their exact number is not known. The offi-

cial explanation of this lack of data is the traditional one: SAA say that people at home are equal and therefore “we do not collect data by ethnic criteria”.

Judging by indirect signs, it would be fair to say that Roma make up more than two thirds of these 40,000. Following the amendment of the Law on Social Assistance (LSA) by the National Assembly during the summer of last year, starting from 2008, the vast majority of these people will no longer be entitled to these payments.

This is because, according to the latest version of Art.12 of the LSA effective of 01/07/2006, (1) unemployed persons at working age, except for persons under Art.126, para.2, may receive a monthly social assistance payment for a uninterrupted period of 18 months”. And so, if you are unemployed, and provided you meet an array of other requirements set by the officials of the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy (MLSP), and namely “the person’s or family’s income”, “property owned”, “marital status”, “health condition”, “employment”, “age”, “and other established circumstances”, including if you are participating “in employment programmes, approved by OBEKTIV 1

the Minister of labour and social policy”, that is, if you do the so called “5-days”, you may receive social assistance. To that end you will need to dig or sweep the streets or something similar for 5 days. Surely, if they really work during those 5 days, people will have actually earned their money, which means that these payments will no longer “assistance”. It is an entirely different matter that the 5-day unqualified labour is normally totally disorganised, extremely unproductive and the amount of the assistance payment is often higher than the actual amount earned.

Other than that, the law does not specify which “employment programmes” these should be and of what duration. There is nothing to guarantee that, following some new set of rules or an ordinance they will not become so long (e.g. requiring 15 instead of 5 days of actual work) as to totally change the payment from “assistance” to “wage” though ridiculous and considerably lower than the minimum wage. Lest we forget, labour pay may not be below the minimum wage.

However, even if all the above requirements are met, the payment period may not exceed 18 months except for mothers of young children (only until the latter are 3 years old), people with disabilities, pregnant women, and those looking after a disabled person, etc.

What next?

Probably the worst consequence of cutting social assistance payments is that these people will not be in receipt of any medical services either.

For all Bulgarian citizens medical insurance is mandatory but not at all unconditionally so, that is they do receive medical services through the mediation of the National Health Fund (NHF) only if they make regular monthly health insurance payments. For some people the health payment is provided for by the budget, such as children, pensioners, the military, prisoners, students up to a certain age, the unemployed (for the period they are paid unemployment benefits). Finally, the budget provides for medical payments for all people in receipt of social assistance but only until they are “entitled to them”, as specified in Art.40, para.2 of the Law on Health Insurance (LHI)*. In other words, as soon as the SAA discontinues payments, your debt to the NHF is no longer covered.

Apart from this, according to Art.52 of the LHI, “persons without insurance under this law shall pay for the medical services provided”. They will have to buy medical care at the full prices determined in the annual pricelist of the Health Fund. Here, too, there are exceptions. These people may have heart attacks, strokes, serious gall-bladder problems and similar crises without worries, as the LHI provides for free emergency service.

How urgent and how free these really are is a different

* Insurance is provided for by the state budget... for citizens who meet the criteria for monthly social assistance payments and dedicated assistance for heating under the LSI, unless otherwise insured or placed in specialised social service institutions.

2 OBEKTIV

matter though. They may also “go mental” entirely free of charge, as psychiatric care, too, is exempt.

Thus, to confirm again, as of January 2008, thousands of people in Bulgaria will be deprived of the already not so great social assistance toward their basic survival and healthcare needs, so far provided by the state. The majority of them will be Roma.

The point of this ultraliberal measure to be applied at the initiative of the “left-wing” Minister of labour Emilia Maslarova, was to stop abuse of the system and make people work through economic means. No one is even trying to deny the incidence of abuse. Hundreds of SAA officials are working for its detection and prevention. This is what they are paid for. But then, possibly due to the extreme workload and in a sudden urge of humaneness, the Ministry decided to relieve it by simply removing part of their duties, meaning, logically, that if, “by law”, a person is no longer receiving social assistance payments, there will be no need to check whether he or she is abusing the system in any way.

For comfort purposes, in their legislative artwork, our MPs failed to see that limiting the period of social assistance payments is in total contradiction to Art.13 of the European Social Charter.

It says that “any person without adequate resources is granted social assistance and medical care”. There are no time limits here and it is only right, as a person either needs society to help him or her live because for one reason or another her or she is without or unable to secure such resources, or not. Following the absurd logic of our members of parliament and their MLSP inspirers, you only need assistance for one and a half years, and then, on the very first day of the nineteenth month, you suddenly don’t. “The obligation to provide assistance arises when a person is in need of it, i.e. he or she is unable to secure adequate resources for his or her living.” This is what it says on page 104 of the official guidelines of the European Committee of Social Rights, the official body judging the conformity of national law and practice with the European Social Charter.

There has hardly been a more antisocial measure introduced, and not even by some American neoconservatives but by a “government of social responsibility”. Instead of improving the methods of control, it is simply cutting everything out. Instead of making the obtaining - through the help of the MLSP - of some qualification capable of securing employment a possible condition for refusal of social assistance payment, we are served a total annihilation. The latest fashion now is EU funds and the promise of a few days ago that with the funds under EU Seventh Framework Programme, 38 thousand people will obtain qualifications. Are these going to be the same people whose social assistance payments will be discontinued as of January 2008? Personally, I am not so sure but I believe in the likelihood of riots similar to those in Slovakia two years ago. And who is going to assume responsibility then?