How many more changes await us in addition to the merger of the four amounts of material aid? Can you tell us what other change could be coming?
When it comes to standard social benefits in the eyes of the public, this is the key one. But we are also preparing steps in the changes that will concern, for example, the allowance for care and handling of disabilities. From 2025, we want to have a unified structure, when there won’t be two offices for the entire care allowance processing agenda, because today the Labor Office and the Czech Social Security Administration do it, we will unify everything under it, we will strengthen personnel capacities there.
Today, unfortunately, we process the care allowance for up to 140 days, often even in a situation where the client may already die before receiving the decision. My ambition is to unify the whole thing, speed it up and shorten it to roughly two months. Plus even more simplification in the case of really serious diagnoses, where the course is irreversible, so that the relevant specialist, doctor, for example an oncologist or a palliative physician can decide on it with the fundamental medical opinion. These things affect hundreds of thousands of people in this country.
How much more time will further changes require? Can you make it before the end of the election period?
We have already put something into practice, today parental allowance, child allowance and housing allowance are all digital. There, I perceive a decent increase in applicants in digital form. All the things that I have described here will be launched either from January 1, 2025, or during 2025. We have really set an extremely fast pace, for example in a corporate the systems would have been developed longer, tested longer, we don’t have time for that, the the train left 10, 15 years ago, we are catching up a lot. We also recruited the best people from the market who were doing digitization in commercial companies. I would say that we are the only ministry that has such a competent team, which is why we are also successful.
Can we fear some chaos at the Labor Office following the merging of benefits?
I believe we can manage it without chaos and any major complications. Of course, we are trying to prepare those things, to transform the office, to prepare for the change and work with the client. At the same time, it is not a completely simple thing, because we are changing procedures that have been in place for, say, 30 years, so it is a question not only of setting up the technology process, but also of some mental changes in the people themselves. I regret that my predecessors did not do this, because it could have been more spread out over time. This is not only related to better accessibility for the client, but for us it also means simplifying the functioning of the process within the state, we are able to be more efficient at the office, save costs.
Will there be a need for some training for female clerks to learn to work with digitized systems?
This is not the most fundamental problem, the workers work with those systems, but different procedures are needed. If the person submits it to us through the client zone, then a large part of the process is already handled digitally, there is no need to rewrite and scan the application. Rather, it will be important for us to manage the change of job with the client, especially with the one who will be out of work for a long time, who is perhaps not active as a job seeker today. It will be necessary to have more time with those people, talk with them, prepare an activation plan with them, really do the social work that was not so emphasized today, there was no time or capacity for it.
One of the things people are worried about is the announced means test…
It seems strange to all of us when today the state pays a relatively large allowance for housing for many years, an amount that can be as much as 15, 18, 20,000 CZK per month, to someone who has, for example, several apartments that they rent out. And we as taxpayers pay for it. We try to approach it based on some principles, a household that is common in the Czech Republic, that is, you have your own apartment or house where you live, we take that as a basis. If you have another property, either a cottage, or you inherited it from your parents and you expect one of your children to live there in the future, we also consider that other property as something that will be accepted. But the moment you have not only these two properties, but another three, four, ten apartments or houses or something like that, you will no longer pass the property test.
The issue of vehicle registration is the same, if the household has three to four people over the age of 18, we will accept one motor vehicle or one car for each person in the test. We will not examine age, brand, that would be really difficult to judge. We take it as a means of transportation to work. But for a person who is alone, applies for this form of support and at the same time has 10 cars in the vehicle register, we should logically ask if he needs that support.
So a benefit claimant is allowed one cottage and one car?
A family that has built or repaired a house, taken out a mortgage on it, can be completely at peace. A family that has such a house and perhaps a second property, which they may have inherited from their parents and uses for recreation or expects that one of their children may live there, will pass the property test.
And if he has three properties?
Then the person has to evaluate it, then they don’t have to submit the application.
How will the savings be assessed, above what limit will a person no longer receive benefits?
We are still having a big debate with experts about this here. Here again, I want us to avoid a difficult situation for a person who behaves responsibly, saves, for example, as part of construction or retirement pension insurance. So that we don’t force him to dissolve his savings because he will lose his job for a few months, for example. Here we will still look for the final setting. I really want to be reasonable about it. On the other hand, if someone has millions of crowns in cash, they should not be supported by taxpayers’ money.
Shadow Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Aleš Juchelka was concerned that the new system would not harm the interests of children. For Rádio Prostor, he said that the child allowance could be shifted to school administration, for example. What do you think about it?
We don’t plan to do that, I don’t think that schools here should replace the social system. We are looking for cooperation with the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports, so that we can more simply and better support parents and families who objectively do not have money to pay for school lunches, for example, so that it starts working better than before. Today, it depends on the fact that the school must be in the system, there must be a conscious director, and if the director does not want to and is not in the program, then the problem is how to pay for this. We want to simplify this in the future and, thanks to digitization, make it possible for a family that is really in such need that they can’t even cover the costs of the child’s school lunches, so that we can help here.
The children’s school attendance will also be assessed in applications for contributions. How many absences will be tolerated?
We will also publish the exact final limit, I am convinced that the way we are changing the system here, it should simply have the motivation I was talking about just now, but it should also have clearly defined boundaries of rights and obligations. It is the parent’s duty to ensure that the child fulfills the compulsory school attendance, that he is educated. We have regions where, for example, 10, 20% of children end their education by finishing only primary school and often do not even pass the ninth grade, some only pass the eighth or seventh grade. What kind of employment does that person have on the labor market, what will his life be like, how will this person then be dependent on the social system? Maybe it sounds harsh to some, but I stand behind it, that we should clearly tell the parents: Look, this too will be subsidized in some way by the fact that the child goes to school.
“There will always be material want”
I will present a model situation: A poorer family, both parents work, they have a small child and, for example, a teenage boy who got into a bad party and does not go to school. Will it then affect the whole family?
If the parents work, then the work bonus will be so motivating that the family will not be in a difficult situation in terms of supporting the social system. Every parent knows that it is not easy with teenage children, we were all teenagers too. After all, we have to try to solve this, whether only the parents or parents with the support of specialists, so that it can be changed. But I am convinced that we cannot resign ourselves to that. I understand the specific individual life situations. By the way, we will always be able to remember them as part of extraordinary immediate assistance, which will remain for truly ad hoc exceptional impact situations.
You are criticized that we do not yet know the exact details of the benefit reform. How do you react to that?
I made the presentation because we finished discussions at the level of the working groups, at the level of debates with experts, with the field, we also visited some regions, where we also spoke with municipal politicians and collected feedback from them. Journalists were asking about it more and more often, and information started to appear in the media that might not be completely true or objective, so I simply said to present at least the principles of how the benefit revision will behave. We will send the paragraph wording to the interdepartment during the month of March, where then there will really be a list of clear details and final parameters.
What false information has been circulating?
There was talk that there would be some de-dosing, that there would be a super-dosing, without giving context to how it would behave, that it would actually have those four components. After Monday, I noticed the reaction of people who wrote to me that they have several children and both of them work, but they have lower incomes, they built a house, they had a mortgage on it and now they are worried that they might just lose their child benefit. So I clearly say: No. These people will not lose it, on the contrary, the fact that they both work will be appreciated even more. The house will not be a barrier or an obstacle in this respect at all.
How will the new benefit system work when a crisis comes and unemployment rises, such as the coronavirus pandemic?
If there is any crisis situation, or any one-off fluctuation, we are able to flexibly react to the situation with the key parameters, and therefore the amount of support. On the one hand, by the fact that any government will be able to support the value of the subsistence minimum at any time in the future, which is essential for what the amount of that support will be and what the limits will be for that support, and at the same time, in the housing component, that government will be able to react precisely by moving that limit those norms, as we have been doing for the past two years. The system will actually have the possibility to react dynamically and flexibly to any major changes in the crisis.
Will the super benefit sufficiently help single mothers? According to your graph, the increase in support will be about a thousand crowns…
It is an improvement in the living situation of single mothers, single breadwinners, those who will either directly have the work activity as a job, or if they have a problem with employment, they will try to get that job. This can be seen from the example, the increase there is a thousand or more crowns, of course it depends on what the housing costs are, then everything is reflected in how the system will behave in this respect, but it will be an improvement situation.
I will add to this one more thing that we are trying to do with the Ministry of Justice, and that is to set better rules for setting alimony and at the same time for its valorization. It is a common problem that alimony does not change at all for many years, often mothers will say that it is not worth arguing with their ex. So we want, for example, the decisions of that court to include decisions on the principle of valorization, which they do not contain today. We do this, among other things, to support the child and at the same time to be fair to the social system. If the other parent does not pay for it and does not contribute adequately to the upbringing and education of the child, we are actually saturating it from the social system. We often do this in case we don’t have to, when the other parent has that income.
The law on social entrepreneurship should help those who are less employable. Will you bring him closer?
The Act on Social Enterprise and Entrepreneurship will set the principle so that we have a clear definition of what is a social enterprise that will employ people with some type of limitation, either a disability or another type of handicap, or it is people who have been for a very long time the unemployed while serving a sentence, or perhaps people who have been treated for addiction and we need to gradually return them to the labor market. They need to have a structure of employers who will give people actual work and at the same time be able to work with them according to the specific situations. The idea that today you release someone from prison and tomorrow they start working in a factory and can handle everything, that’s not how it works. We see it in the recidivism rate, by the way.
These social enterprises will actually be able to combine giving a person a job and social support. The goal is to gradually get those people onto the open labor market, for this these companies will have a certain motivational bonus, but at the same time there is a group of clients where this will not be possible and it is actually a success that the person is able to work for, say, four or five hours because he has various limitations, whether medical or mental. We need these businesses here, we will support them, for example, in the form of better access to public contracts or in the form of a discount on social insurance within the trade unions for these people, so that simply these businesses are really able to ensure that they are economically sustainable in the long term.
Is it good for the less adaptable to have that super dose at zero? Shouldn’t there be at least a minimum contribution?
There will always be that material need, if a person were to be left completely penniless on the street and unable to pay for, for example, a stay in an asylum or basic food security, that will not happen. But in order for that person to do nothing at all, he was out of the register of job applicants for years, and we saturated him by sending him an allowance and a supplement for housing in the amount of more than 20 thousand crowns, so that won’t happen. That is why I say that if we are to give this person support as taxpayers and the state, then at least there should be an activation plan. Well, that person might not find a job because there are more complicated circumstances, but that’s why there might be the institute that we actually want to activate significantly more, and that’s the public service.
What will be the impact on some gray job market. Do you expect people to want to go back to the ostensibly normal system?
I think we will gradually succeed. That job bonus component is really going to be a significant financial item, and at the same time, it’s been a few years now as part of the grace summer where we’ve helped tens of thousands of people get out of debt significantly and we’re seeing a drop in the number of people in foreclosures. In addition, changes are already in the final stage in terms of speeding up debt relief processes so that it can be done in three years, not five.
