Every salary earner can ask for a partially compensated ticket to sanatorium

The Government allocated about 20 million lei to the fund of the National Social Insurance House (CNAS) for 2012 for preventing diseases and restoring the work capacity of the insured persons by sanatorium treatment. Contacted by Info-Prim Neo Nicolae Tibuleac, head of the CNAS Employee Social Insurance Division, said any salary earner in Moldova can receive partially compensated tickets to sanatorium, Info-Prim Neo reports. The tickets are purchased by the CNAS and distributed by the National Confederation of Trade Unions of Moldova. The money is allocated from the state social insurance budget that consists of the social insurance contributions paid by the employers and employees, no matter whether they are trade union members or not. Consequently, any salary earner can ask for a ticket to receive treatment at sanatorium. Under the regulations, the persons who had been on sick leave for 40 to 60 days during a year and the employer did not transfer the sum needed to benefit from at least a ticket can file an application to the CNAS. 10% of all the bought tickets are earmarked for such persons yearly. According to Nicolae Tibuleac, the sanatoriums are selected according to the natural factor (mud, mineral water, climate) and according to the financial attractiveness of the offers. The sanatoriums that sign contracts with the CNAS almost every year are: “Codru” (Calarasi), “Nufarul alb” (Cahul), “Struguras” (Dubasari, Cocieri), “Bucuria”, and “Speranta” (Vadul lui Voda), “Constructorul” (Chisinau). The tickets distributed to the economic entities or their trade union committees are distributed to employees according to criteria set by the employers. The salary earners must pay the return ticket and 20% of the price of the ticket. Though the law that allows the employees to benefit from sanatorium treatment has been in force for many years, some of the employers do not know that they can obtain compensated tickets for their employees. The chairman of the National Employers Confederation Leonid Cerescu said the employers with a larger number of employees are more interested in these tickets, while the smaller economic entities do not express great interest as they realize that the funds transferred by them to the social insurance budget are too small for them to benefit from at least one ticket. Contacted by Info-Prim Neo, an employer with 20 employees said he transfers about 250,000 lei yearly into the social insurance budget. Thus, the sum of 2.5 million lei set for 2011, which enables him to get a ticket to sanatorium, can be gathered in only 10 years. The head of the Small Business Association Eugen Roscovanu considers that many economic entities do not know about these concessions because the bodies responsible for informing the people about the access to sanatorium treatment do not appropriately fulfill their duties. According to the data of the Association, the small and medium-sized companies represent 97.7% of all the companies. In 2012, the ratio will be about six tickets to 1 000 employees. In 2011, there were purchased 2 430 tickets.