Maternity leave period could decline

At the Secretary of State for Employment it has been discussed the text of a draft law regarding welfare which beginning with the next year should make order in the activity related to the benefits.

This social act should come into force in 2011 and it will put together all the acts that regulate the welfare sector.

On this occasion more changes will be brought in regarding this law in the sense that there will be taken into account the decrease of the beneficiaries’ or the benefits’ number.

Now there are fifteen types of such benefits.

The aforementioned will be based on transferring active people on the labor market because, now, in Romania there are too many beneficiaries, that is over 10 million.

Thus, conditions for granting benefits will become harsher what means that the number of workers who receive such public benefits will decline.

It is been looked for directing these resources towards those families and persons that really need support and that are in the situation of being socially excluded.

Another forecast refers also to the indemnity assigned for raising a child.

Labor Minister Ioan Botiş declared that there is being discussed four alternatives, including also the decrease of the period for granting indemnity, from two years to one without modifying its quantum.

Mother may still be in maternity leave for raising her baby but she will be paid for only one year.

There is still unknown if the indemnity for rising children and that for unemployment will come back to the value before the mitigation of 15 percent.

Translated by: Cristina Anamaria Maricescu
MA students MTTLC, Bucharest University