PM Ciolacu: Social protection used without empathy, as business, in elderly people's and disabled people's homes
Social protection has been used without empathy, "as a business", and the Romanian state "needs help" to implement a process of change of mentality and approach, prime minister Marcel Ciolacu said on Monday at a consultative meeting with non-governmental organisations on the reform of the social assistance system in Romania, organised at the Prime Minister's Chancellery by state advisor Victoria Stoiciu, told Agerpres.
The prime minister said that an emergency ordinance is needed to change the control and authorization system, but also "the dismantlement of at least one institution within the Ministry of Labour that has failed to function in terms of control and being an extra link, used by someone, I repeat, to make some profits, not to protect people".
He also pointed out that so far there is no computerised registry of social benefit beneficiaries, but also that the law is too permissive, referring to the fact that a person cannot be hosted in one part of the country and his relatives to be hundreds of kilometres away.
"There is no computer system and we are in 2023, I firmly believe that with the help of the Court of Auditors we will discover that the same people are being paid twice. We need a totally different approach to what the Romanian state pays and what the beneficiaries pay, like the system in other countries (...) We are talking about elderly people and people with disabilities. The big problem is in the area of people with disabilities, where the rules should not be equal for all categories or for children. And we are going to think of a medical assistance service and a need for certain treatments, certain medication higher in one category of people and lower in another category. The 'we are all the same' approach, as it was during communism, is not the right approach," said Ciolacu.
The prime minister added that, in parallel, work will also be done on a bill that will introduce fundamental changes in the social assistance system. The prime minister added that legislative intervention is needed to find a mechanism for collaboration with the Ministry of Labour and local authorities and direct access to information.
Minister of Labour Simona Bucura-Oprescu stressed the importance of finalising the reform package related to social services by 31 August.
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