Tue, 17 Nov, 2015 12:09:21 AM FTimes – STT Report, Nov 17  Pensioners Association organized a demonstration against government cuts to the Helsinki Citizens' Square on October 8, 2015. File Photo – Lehtikuva. The government on Monday reversed its decision to combine pensioners’ housing allowance with the general housing support, bringing relief to an estimated 200,000 pensioners in the country.
In addition, the government cut by half the planned saving target on pharmaceutical reimbursements. The remaining savings on pharmaceuticals are to be carried out in such a way that it would have minimal effect on users of drugs.
Social Affairs and Health Minister Hanna Mäntylä told the news agency STT that other areas where savings could be made to replace the planned cuts are being sought.
Mäntylä said the target areas being sought to replace the shelved cuts will not touch on pensioners and other low-income earners or affect people’s everyday lives.
The planned cuts on pensioners’ housing allowance would have rendered 27,000 senior citizens below the poverty line.
Photo – Lehtikuva. The government hinted in September that it would go easy on the cuts, when it announced that the housing support would only be reduced by a maximum of 60 euros.
The minister said the pensioners’ housing allowance cuts and their implications have been discussed throughout the autumn. She did not, however, specify how in the end the government reached the decision to drop the cuts.
“We have come to the assessment that this would be very inappropriate to some of the pensioners, who we now want to protect,” Mäntylä said.
The opposition took the opportunity of the turnaround and basked in glory following an interpellation lodged back in October.
The chair of the Vihreä liitto (Green League) parliamentary group, Outi Alanko-Kahiluoto said the government should have learned to make impact assessment of its decisions.
“Listen to researchers of poverty and ask for calculations in order to prevent deepening poverty and increasing income disparities and inequality,” Alanko-Kahiluoto wrote in her blog.
The planned savings on housing allowance would have brought savings of nearly 20 million euros in 2016 and afterwards 60 million euros a year.
Initially, the saving target on pharmaceutical reimbursement was set at 50 million euros; therefore, next year’s savings of more than 40 million euros has to be found from somewhere else.
The average housing allowance for pensioners at the end of October was 222 euros a month.
More News
|
|
Finland Times
| Thursday, 25 April, 2024 |
|
Copyright © 2024 All rights reserved
|
||||
