By Andria Kades
THE second phase of the Guaranteed Minimum Income (GMI) scheme is coming into force, offering care to elderly people in need, Labour minister Zeta Emilianidou said on Friday during an extraordinary House labour committee session.
So far, 1,271 people have applied for this section of the scheme that allows for day care, 24-hour care and payment of fees for residential care, she said.
A move that will also open up the job market for carers, Emilianidou said the state is calling for unemployed people that speak Greek and have knowledge of first aid to apply for the role and will be paid €400 from the state and money from EU funds to bring the amount up to the minimum wage.
Committee chairman Andreas Fakontis, however, noted that several people are still waiting for their applications to be processed.
“Recipients of state aid and disabled people had their benefits terminated in May and until today they have yet to have their GMI applications processed.”
Disabled people with deposits less than €20,000 or children under the age of 18 with family deposits less than €20,000 have already been approved and will receive their allowance by the end of October or the latest, November 15, Fakontis said.
Overall, 2,500 applications have been submitted for GMI with 350 reviewed and 250 approved.
“If the rate by which the applications are processed does not change, it will take two years to finish examining all the applications,” he added.
The brunt of the work means state workers are struggling to inform applicants which stage their application is at, particularly over the phone which many times go unanswered due to their workload, Fakontis said.
Meanwhile, Greens party leader Giorgos Perdikis said the GMI could not resolve the social problems created by the financial meltdown as it only offers the basic needs to the worst cases across the country, but there were still thousands of people in need who were exempt due to the criteria.
However, DISY MP Nicos Nouris sought to stress that the budget for social benefits has not been reduced in the slightest, there was merely more better examinations of cases.
Only recently, Emilianidou said half of the rejected applicants had cash deposits anywhere from €25,000 to over €1m, while 60 per cent of those rejected had wealth over €200,000, and in 94 cases over €1m.
So far, 12,670 families have been incorporated under the GMI scheme, which translates to 23,500 individuals.
As of now, there are 60 employees reviewing the applications with 50 of them being hourly paid staff, according to Perdikis, who said this was too much of a load for this number of people.
In order to boost the efficiency and strengthen the department, the state should create a structure, hierarchy and new jobs.
The committee also discussed problems that single parents face and how the state could support them, while other reports also say that AKEL submitted a proposal to help families that had a parent in prison.
