BRATISLAVA, February 26, (WEBNOVINY) – The Cabinet’s decision to hand out 45,000 tons of flour and eggless pasta to individuals in material need is a cardinal mistake and dehonestation of people, Stanislav Becik, a minister in the shadow Cabinet of SMER-SD, said on the Slovak Radio in Saturday’s Dialogues program. He claims that the Cabinet will also distribute the food among people able to work instead of creating appropriate conditions for them.
Agriculture Minister Zsolt Simon (MOST-HID) reminded Becik that the previous government applied for similar aid from the EU. „The Cabinet of Robert Fico asked the European Commission for this assistance in the first half of 2011“, he noted. The minister went on to say that the assistance to people dependent on social assistance, children living in children’s homes, single parents taking care of dependent children and people living in social service homes is not a solution to soaring food prices. Since 1987, the European Union has been allotting some 500 million euro annually to help these people, Simon elaborated. Unless Slovakia uses the assistance, it will end up in France, Romania or another country that will apply for it. “It is absolutely not true that we will lose it unless we distribute it. Because also other countries will use it but for groups of people affected by natural disasters, for immigrants and not for people able to work,” Becik countered. Simon argued that the assistance does not cost Slovakia a single cent.
Becik is of the opinion that handing out pasta or flour is the reaction to the economic measure package approved by the Cabinet, which has profoundly affected Slovakia’s citizens. The Financial Policy Institute confirmed, according to Becik, that price growth on world’s markets had a one-third portion on the 18-euro increase in expenses of a four-member family, while the two-third share fell to the economic measure package adopted by the Cabinet. Simon replied that the measures had to be introduced because the Cabinet inherited “a decayed country with empty treasury”.
The food price growth is close to the upper limit, the minister says. “We are near the peak”, he announced. Simon admitted that prices cannot be influenced but their increase can be moderated. “We will be able to mitigate them when we will make maximum effort to have a local alternative and not exclusive dependency on foreign countries,” the minister explained. He expects lowering of power prices and a system of direct sale to the end consumer to have positive effects on people.
SITA