Romanian labor minister: Capping the child raising allowance will prevent scam

Romanian labor minister Lia Olguta Vasilescu said yesterday at the Parliament that setting a cap on the child raising allowance will stop scamming the Romanian state. The capping will not affect a lot of people in Romania but only those who “unsettled” the system and received very large amounts. She explained that 623 people got child raising allowances of over RON 10,000 (2,200) per month at the end of the March. However, most of the beneficiaries (over 108,400) got amounts below RON 1,233 (EUR 271). Vasilescu said she would favor a limit of RON 8,000 (EUR 1,760) for the child raising allowance. Social Democrat MP Adrian Solomon, the head of the Chamber’s Labor Committee said yesterday that there was no risk that the child raising allowance will be capped this year. He added that a RON 10,000 limit would be “more than reasonable.” Capping the child raising allowance to RON 5,000-10,000 (EUR 1,100-EUR 2,200) is one of the measures prepared by the Government to reduce budget expenses, according to a document approved on Friday and analyzed by Profit.ro. Asked on Tuesday if he supported the proposal to cap the child raising allowance, the Social Democrat leader Liviu Dragnea replied that he would not respond anymore to “all kinds of ideas” coming from some people. He recommended his colleagues “to be more reserved with the projects”. Last year, the Parliament removed the cap on the child raising allowance, which was about RON 3,500, allowing one of the parents to get 85% of their average monthly revenues to stay at home with their newborns for two years. This has led to cases in which some people got very high allowances from the state. A lawyer in Bucharest currently gets the highest child raising allowance, namely RON 159,000 (EUR 35,000) per month. editor@romania-insider.com