Many Chechen children live below poverty lineTimur Aliyev, North Caucasus - Over 400,000 Chechen children live in families whose average income is below the republic's subsistence level, stated Abubakar Khusayenov, analytical section head of the Labour and Social Development Ministry of the Chechen Republic.
"The state undertook to support needy families by paying them a monthly child allowance. Currently this is being given to 420,800 children in families where the income of one member does not exceed the republic's subsistence level," said Khusayenov.
And that level, according to him, is now 2,320 rubles for working people, 1,774 for pensioners and 2,120 for children.
Although families with children represent the largest group, and the law requires that the size of social transfers be determined every year, the allowance for children has not changed in four years. So it still stands at 70 rubles per child and 140 for unwed mothers, said Khusayenov.
And this represents only two or three percent of monies needed to assure that a child lives at least at or above the subsistence level, he added.
(1 dollar = 29 rubles)
Editor's note: Speaking at a news conference in Rostov-on-Don on May 15, Russia's Audit Chamber chairman Sergei Stepashin said that the authorities do not know who the true recipients of child allowances are in the Chechen Republic. Statistical figures in the republic are a big problem and "we don't know how many people actually live in Chechnya," RIA-Novosti quoted Stepashin as saying.
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