The biggest investment our country needs today is in a modern welfare state
AKEL C.C. Press Office, 9th December 2020, Nicosia
The government’s selective sensitivity for individual cases does not cure the country’s big social policy deficit. The arrest of the 35-year-old working single parent the day before yesterday must be the occasion to open the debate on the welfare state we need.
Today we are faced with three indisputable conclusion:
- Expenditure on social protection for families and children in Cyprus is almost half of the European average.
- The Cypriot family relies on informal frameworks or private institutions for the care of children, where the fees rise up to 400 euros. As a result, 30% of parents in Cyprus have the sole responsibility for childcare.
- The Minimal Guaranteed Income mechanism has been built in a way that ignores the real needs of people, while the Social Welfare Services have still not been reorganized as the government has repeatedly announced.
We believe that there are radical solutions that can really improve the daily lives of thousands of families, working parents, single parents. AKEL has elaborated a comprehensive social policy proposal, in which our positions for an integrated network of care facilities infrastructures for dependents stand out, with the contribution of Local Government, the implementation of a child and infant care cost subsidy scheme for low and middle-income families and the introduction of a paid parental leave scheme.
The biggest investment the country needs today is in a modern welfare state.
