Ministry of Social Policy drafting bill introducing basic social assistance

Minister of Social Policy Oksana Zholnovych said this in an interview with Rada TV, Ukrinform reports.

"Today, the level of subsistence minimum, laid down in the state budget, is obviously insufficient to meet people’s needs. For example, it takes no account of people being part of households. Obviously, someone who is single needs a bit more money than a household of five or six people who have joint expenses... So we want to move away from the slightly outdated unit of subsistence minimum. For this purpose, we have developed a new draft law on basic social assistance, the standard of which will be the minimum income of a household," Zholnovych said.

Currently, the minister notes, the draft is being finalized. In parallel lines, the Ministry of Social Policy plans to issue a pilot decree "to see how such a new type of assistance performs."

As reported with reference to the World Bank, over the past four years, the number of Ukrainians living below poverty line has increased by 1.8 million, to 29% of the population.