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Public Defender Calls Upon the Minister of Labor, Healthcare and Social Welfare to Protect the Public Rights of Social Welfare

March 21, 2007

On January 4 2007, the public defender petitioned to Lado Chipashvili, where he asked the Minister to inform him whether the Ministry had discussed and studied the appeal of Ina Komakhidze.

“On August 8 2005, Ina Komakhidze, who has lived in a cardoon hut in the corner of Machabeli Street for several years already, applied to the Ministry in order to be granted with allowances within the Poverty Reduction State Program.  

On February 5 the public defender received a reply: “Ina Komakhidze cannot involve the state program of identification of impoverished families, evaluation of the socio-economical level and data base formation because she does not have permanent address.” The Minister proved his arguments by the March 17, 2005 Georgian Government’s resolution # 51, Article 2, section I, subsection I, where the family is defined “as a group of people, relatives or others, living in one accommodation and conducting housework together.”

The public defender does not agree with the Minister’s opinion, because in the section II of the same resolution it is underlined that “a family is a person who permanently resides on a certain place,” and also ‘a family can be set up with only one member.”

The public defender thinks that Ina Komakhidze completely meets the demands of the resolution. She is a lonely person and has lived in the area for three years already.
According to the resolution, a person who

a) is at the penitentiary detention setting;
b) is under forcible medical treatment;
c) serves his military term;
d) is abroad;
e) is declared lost or dead by the court

cannot apply to the Ministry to be granted with allowances within the Poverty Reduction State Program.

The resolution does not give any information as if a homeless person (or how the minister calls her, a person who does not have a home) cannot involve the program. Thus, Komakhidze has right to be an applicant of the state program.

Article 3 of the resolution stated that formation of the data base is a legal process and consists of ‘evaluation process of applicants’ socio-economical level’ and ‘granting with rate points’. In Komakhidze’s case the State Agency of the Social Welfare and Employment did not do its duty-did not estimate her socio-economical conditions and neither granted her with the point.

Resolution stated that if an applicant fills in a form and submits it to the communication office, it proves that s/he agrees with:
a) Any institutions that can grant social allowance to her/him, to find out any information that deals with his/her identification and estimate his/her socio-economical conditions.
b) Introduce the gathered information to other institutions and organizations that are in power to grant allowances. The above-mentioned activities will be dedicated to improve the applicant’s economical conditions.

In Komakhidze’s case the state agency did not do its duties. Otherwise, she should have been granted with allowance under the law on “Social Aid”. (The law envisages “impoverished families and homeless people who badly need special care and permanently reside in Georgia).

Since the governmental resolution neglected certain norms in accordance with Komakhidze-“she was not granted with the status of applicant”, “her living conditions were not estimated”, “her accommodation was not considered to be a house,” “she was not declared to be a one-member family”; “her rate point was not estimated” and consequently she could not involve the state program. As a result her rights on social welfare were violated. It should also be pointed out that the allowance has crucial importance for Komakhidze.

The public defender sent recommendations to the Minister Lado Chipashvili and asked him to discuss Komakhidze’s application once more and grant her with the applicant’s status in order to receive allowance under the law.

Information was sent by the Public Defender’s Press Centre

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