Prishtina
July 12th, 2018
Today, Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Welfare Çerkin Dukolli participated in the presentation of the ‘Report on the standard of living of the elderly of Kosovo’, a research done by the Kosovo Stability Initiative.
IKS’s research has shown the current status of the elderly in many viewpoints, including pensions, health policies and social services. According to this research, it turns out that the care of Kosovar society for the elderly still needs improvements. According to this research, it is concluded that pensioners are a bit disregarded, either in terms of their institutional status, their status in society, or in favorable social policies.
Deputy Minister Dukolli said that societies address the issue of the elderly according to specific laws. “We address this issue by being based on the Law on Social and Family Services, which defines the role and responsibilities in the field of social and family services at the central and local level, and also the role of the non-governmental sector in the field of social and family services.
Deputy Minister Dukolli stressed that there are two schemes covering this category in the pension system, namely: the old-age pension with a payment of 75 euros per month and the contribution pension, with the base of 158 euros and even higher, depending on the level of education that a person owns, where in total there are over 165,000 beneficiaries.
He mentioned the free public health service, the housing of a considerable number of the elderly in the elderly care homes and community homes, and also a range of other services provided by the state.
Deputy Minister Dukolli emphasized the commitment and the good work that MLSW is doing in order to change the current legislation, including the concept paper on the regulation of the pension system in Kosovo, the draft law on labor, the draft law on maternity and parental leave and the concept-paper on the regulation of social and family services.
He praised the IKS report as a good and inclusive report. “Definitely a good report, quite credible, for which I congratulate IKS, and in particular its researcher. However, in some parts of the report, Dukolli also had remarks. “For instance, in the section ‘Is the state active in the care of the elderly? 94% believe that the state is responsible for them and 69% think the state is not doing its job’ I think that a sample of 600 respondents out of 165,000 beneficiaries from the two pension schemes does not provide a realistic overview, ” said Deputy Minister Dukolli.
We as MLSW provide our commitment and cooperation within the legal capacity with all those who have initiatives to raise the standard of living and provide the best conditions for all the elderly in the country.
“Lastly, working in the capacity of an official, and as a human, and since I am also reaching the middle age, I wish all of our elderly mothers and fathers to spend this part of their lives as dignified as they deserve ” he added.