Parliament leaves certain functionaries without right to social dwellings

The state and the local public authorities were exempted from the obligation to provide dwellings to certain groups of civil servants, victims of the Chernobyl accident and political repression and MPs. A relevant bill was passed by a majority vote in first reading at Thursday's sitting of the Parliament. The bill aroused dissatisfaction among the parliamentary group of the PCRM, which did not vote on it, Info-Prim Neo reports. Under the adopted law, the military men, police officers, judges, prosecutors, embassy employees and other functionaries will benefit from social apartments and compensations for paying for the apartment until the state creates the given housing stock. The victims of political repression will be able to get interest-free loans to build new apartments if they do not have their own dwelling or will have the returned apartment or the apartment owned before the repression repaired. The MPs who do not live in the municipality of Chisinau will be provided with apartments while in office. If they are not provided with apartments, they will get allowances to pay for the rented apartment. The employees of the Security and Information Service and of the State Guard Service will not be entitled to social apartments. They were also be deprived of the right to privatize them and of the right to obtain plots on which to build private houses. The prosecutors will be entitled to apartments as a relevant law has been approved recently, Minister of Justice Alexandru Tanase explained. He said that the the state and the local public authorities are often unable to fulfill certain obligations as they do not have the necessary funds. Thus, Moldova loses many related cases at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The minister also said that after examining the Olaru and others against Moldova case, the ECHR recommended Moldova to solve the problems in accordance with the existing legislation. “The Government has six months to approve amendments to the legislation. We have one year to implement court decisions estimated at 12 million euros plus 700,000 euros damages and costs,” Tanase said. A number of 353 related cases have been submitted to the ECHR and are yet to be examined. At the same time, many court decisions remain unimplemented at the national level. The Communist MPs refused to vote on the bill. They said the present administration avoids solving the given problem and identifying possibilities of providing dwellings to a certain number of people. Alexandru Tanase replied that the bill started to be formulated by the previous government.