Ministry of Finance hosts meeting with representatives of citizens' associations on draft procedure for verification of social welfare payments and pensions

On March 9, the Ministry of Finance held a meeting with the representatives of non-commercial citizens’.

The Ministry of Finance is actively working to increase the effectiveness of public spending. With this purpose, in December 2015 the Parliament followed the initiative of the Ministry of Finance and adopted amendments to the legislation laying ground for the verification of all social welfare recipients. Also, the Cabinet of Ministers adopted 7 decrees in February finalizing the legal basis for the launch of the verification process.

During the meeting, head of the department for verification and monitoring of payments at the Ministry of Finance Andriy Ryazantsev told about the mechanism of verification for social welfare payments and pensions as well as about the current and expected results of the verification. «According to the new legislation, the verification process is the task of the Ministry of Finance. We have already elaborated a mechanism enabling us to retrieve and to process huge volumes of information. For example, we will be checking every data three times at least using different sources of information. We are already checking social welfare payments to the internally displaced persons», Andriy Ryazantsev said.

According to the representative of the Ministry of Finance, data from various public authorities will be examined in the course of the verification. These authorities include the Ministry for Social Policy, Pension Fund, Ministry for Internal Affairs, State Treasury, Ministry of Justice and others. Baed on the results of this examination, the Ministry of Finance will be reporting detected violations to the respective authority in charge for providing social welfare. Thus, it’s up to the authority in charge, not to the Ministry of Finance, to decide on the termination of payments to the respective recipient.

The meeting was attended by the representatives of citizens’ organizations «Vostok-SОS», «Pravo na Zakhyst», «Pereselentzi Krymu i Donbasu», «Pravozakhysna Rada Ukrainy», «Caritas Ukraine», «All-Ukrainian Organization for the Affairs of Forcefully Displaced Citizens».