The social service “Personal assistance” will be instituted in Moldova. This will employ the personal assistants from Chisinau, who were dismissed by the municipality. The reemployment process is due to start in May, IPN reports.

“By approving this Government decision, we will be able to create an alternative personal assistance service in the municipality of Chisinau and to rehire all personal assistants who can provide those basic services. We refer especially to personal assistants who suffered from the abusive actions of the municipality of Chisinau. I want to note that for March, the Ministry, together with the partners, paid that compensation payment of 5,000 lei to all the personal assistants. Yesterday, we launched the payment process for April,” Minister of Labor Alexei Buzu stated in the Cabinet’s meeting. This month, the compensation payment from the second tranche varies depending on the amount by which the work norm was reduced.

Under the bill, a highly specialized social service “Personal Assistance” will be created within the Agency for the Management of Social Services with High Specialization. Services will be provided if they cannot be organized and managed by the local public authorities, within the administrative-territorial area established by the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection.

Hundreds of personal assistants in Chisinau, especially of retirement age, were laid off, while those who remained had their wages halved after the municipal authorities announced that they no longer had money to pay them and would not hire new personal assistants who submitted applications. The City Hall accused the central authorities of not including Chisinau municipality in the social assistance reform “Restart” through which the Personal Assistance service from January 1, 2024 has been financed with state budget funds, while the personal assistants were transferred under the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection. The central authorities invoked, in turn, that Chisinau municipality and the administrative-territorial unit of Gagauzia have sufficient possibilities to finance the salaries of personal assistants from their own incomes, but also from special-purpose transfers from the state budget.