Persons on low incomes issued with season tickets

More than 700 pensioners and socially deprived persons from the municipality of Chisinau applied for season tickets allowing them to travel by public units of transport free of charge in the first half of Monday. Last week, the Chisinau Municipal Council decided that the pensioners and socially underprivileged persons on a monthly income lower than 1,450 lei will be able to choose between being issued with a season ticket from February 1 or receiving the monthly travel allowance of 70 lei, Info-Prim Neo reports. At Monday's meeting of the Chisinau services and divisions, Mayor General Dorin Chirtoaca said the decision to provide season tickets to persons on incomes lower than 1,450 lei was not taken under pressure. It is one of the stages of the initiated reform. Before launching the reform, two companies received subsidies from the municipal budget and both the poorer and the richer persons enjoyed social benefits. Now, only the persons on low incomes will get allowances. According to Chirtoaca, the reform shows that the given companies can mange on their own, without allocations from the budget. Chirtoaca banned stopping the issuing of season tickets until the lists of recipients of travel allowances are not checked, as the head of the Social Assistance Division Eugenia Ciobanu asked. He ordered that all the persons receive the allowances simultaneously with the pensions. The examinations will be carried out later. In the meeting, Gheorghe Morgoci, the head of the Electric Transport Company, said the beneficiaries are issued with the season tickets in several hours. In order to hasten this process, a person travels by a company car to the local social assistance divisions in Chisinau and takes the collected documents to the Electric Transport Company, where the tickets are prepared. More than 75,000 persons received monthly allowances of 70 lei for traveling by public means of transport until now. Over 2 million lei was transferred to the post offices from the municipal budget for paying travel allowances to those entitled.