Families with six real estate properties can be recognized as poor in Latvia

One Latvian municipality has apparently decided to add poor status to a household that owns six real estate properties. Other households are denied to be given this status even if they own just one car or tractor. Such a strange situation has been uncovered by Latvian State Audit during its inspection of effectiveness and legality of social assistance provided by Latvian municipalities.

Reduction of poverty in the country has been one of the government’s priorities for a very long time. In 2020 Latvian sustainable development strategy provides for setting poverty reduction as the main priority all they way until 2030. This noteworthy endeavour will require an effective social assistance system.

Over the course of the past four years, however, Latvian Welfare Ministry has failed to progress from words to actions. The social assistance policy has only just been launched; surveys and informative reports have been ordered in order to survey risks and problems. No solutions have been proposed to address existing problems. Moreover – WM has not made sure all municipalities follow the same framework in regard to basic principles of social assistance and its role, as concluded by State Audit.

Very few municipalities have carried out assessments on the state of their residents and their basic needs, which is why there is still no effective support system. Activities of municipalities are dictated by their financial abilities. For example, using the freedom provided by the Cabinet of Ministers, municipalities have put it in their minds that even a family that owns six real estate properties or up to nine vehicles can be recognized as poor. At the same time, however, in other municipalities, families are not provided with poor status even if their only own a tractor. One great example is apartment support that is allocated by some municipalities only to poor families with children and in others – to families with income of up to EUR 320 per person.

SA has also found out that every third municipality does not have a defined poor family status, which provides the right for families to receive real estate tax discounts and other benefits. There are also municipalities that illegally and unjustifiably limit residents’ ability to receive different types of support.

Although municipalities have the means to acquire information about residents’ material state, this information is not used to its full potential or is merely ignored. Because of non-existent control, nine out of ten municipalities that have been assessed by SA have misappropriated at least EUR 124 thousand from January 2013 to April 2014.

The only municipality in which no errors have been uncovered during the audit is Liepaja, because this city’s social service’s use all of their opportunities and options in order to secure control and legality for their decisions. The audit of Latvian municipalities covers the January 1st, 2013 – April 30th, 2014 period of time. A total of ten Latvian municipalities took part in this audit process.
BNN

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