How the unemployed are encouraged to become active in the labour market
Around 6,200 unemployed people received social aid last year out of a total of around 36,000 beneficiaries of this type of social protection, Felicia Bechtoldt, state secretary at the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection, told Radio Moldova. According to her, the amount of this aid will be reduced, as there are many people who receive both unemployment benefit and social aid, which creates an inequality in the system. According to the experts, such a measure would encourage the employable unemployed to become active on the labour market.
As of 1 April, a mechanism has been in place whereby social assistance for the unemployed will be gradually reduced until it is no longer needed, said Felicia Bechtoldt, state secretary at the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection.
Felicia Bechtoldt said that during the past year, about 6,200 unemployed people received social assistance, out of a total of about 36 thousand people, and about 3,500 people received unemployment benefit. This shows that there are a lot of people who are able to work but prefer not to work and live on these benefits, which is a social inequality.
"There is confusion in society about unemployment benefit, which is different from social assistance. Indeed, social assistance is reduced from the first of April this year for those who receive it for six months. Then, in July, it will again be reduced by 40% and in October, those who have been on social assistance for 12 months and if they have not been employed as day labourers for at least 60 days will be excluded from social assistance", explained Felicia Bechtold.
The amount of social aid is reduced only for people who have been on social aid for a long time and do not make an effort to get a job, stressed expert Stas Madan.
"This is done to give people an incentive to get into work. That is to say, those who first enter a social aid scheme, the first time they benefit, the size of the social aid is not reduced, it is only reduced for those who are already service subscribers to the social aid, this is actually the purpose of this action," said Stas Madan.
Data from a survey conducted earlier this year by CBS-Research and the Independent Expert-Grup Centre show that about 39 percent of Moldovan citizens have been unemployed for more than two years, and every tenth unemployed person has no work experience. At the same time, there is a rigidity and lack of diversification in the unemployed's approach to finding a job. In this respect, a wide-ranging process of reforming the National Employment Agency has been initiated, with the aim of improving employment services and attracting more people into employment.
