Moldovan cabinet’s weekly meeting

Chisinau, 30 April /MOLDPRES/-Interim Prime Minister Iurie Leanca today chaired a cabinet meeting, the government’s communication and media relations department has reported.

At the beginning of the meeting, Leanca required state institutions to take all the necessary measures to ensure their functioning in special regime during Easter holidays. According to Leanca’s indications, the Border Police and the Customs Service were required to ensure the flows' easy crossing of the state border. In the same context, the Transports and Road Infrastructure Ministry was required to negotiate a temporary bilaterally mechanism with the Italian side in order to ensure the transportation of packages, given their intense movement during Easter holidays. The Interior Ministry would create optimal conditions in order to ensure the normal functioning of the road traffic on national roads and avoid car accidents. The Health Ministry was required to make sure medical facilities are efficiently providing citizens with emergency medical services during Easter holidays. In the same context, the interim prime minister required the “Moldsilva” state agency to be maximally vigilant in order to avoid fires, as citizens usually organise and participate in events and picnics in forests and parks during May holidays. Leanca also focused on the need to clean the territory, reiterating the previous indication to elaborate a plan and find the necessary resources, which had also been addressed to the Environment Ministry.

The interim prime minister also required the Transports and Road Infrastructure Ministry to urgently elaborate the drafts of the documents on Moldova’s negotiations with the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) on two projects in the road infrastructure and railway modernisation sectors.

Leanca also required responsible authorities to implement legislative provisions, in compliance with the latest amendments providing for the payment of pensions less than 1300 lei starting with 1 May 2013. The interim prime minister required authorities to inform beneficiaries as well as the society of the conditions and methods to get access to these payments, in order to avoid misinterpretations and speculations on this subject.

The interim prime minister thanked Moldovan citizens living abroad, who for the first time, on the occasion of the National Flag Day, had organised an action meant to promote Moldova’s representative at the Eurovision international contest in 13 world cities, including Rome, Lisbon, Paris, Oslo, Dubai and many others. Leanca said such events proved the Moldovan citizens’ ability to unite, support each other and show national spirit.

During the meeting, the acting government approved a string of decisions regulating the labour and social insurances sector. Thus, the ministers amended a number of normative documents on the social inclusion of musculoskeletally-disabled people. The document is meant to increase the financial value of the compensation for the expenditures incurred on transportation services offered to people with musculoskeletal-related disabilities from 500 to 600 lei per year and also include minors without a degree of disability, but who suffer from disabilities of their musculoskeletal system, in the category of citizens who may benefit for free from the services offered by the Republican Experimental Centre of Prosthesis, Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation (CREPOR). According to estimated calculations, almost 900 thousand lei per year are necessary to increase the compensation, whereas the funds had been included in the state budget for 2013.

The ministers approved the amendment of the first paragraph of the decision No 165 of 9 March 2010 on the “guaranteed minimum wage in the real economy sector”. Following the discussions held with representatives of employers’ unions and trade unions, the officials had reached a compromise, which provides for the establishment of a 1400-lei guaranteed minimum wage in the real economy sector worth. The guaranteed minimum wage in the real economy sector is being annually re-examined by the government, depending on the average annual growth of the consumer price index and the growth rate of the labour productivity at the national level.

The acting cabinet approved a regulation on the calculation of the subsistence minimum. The document establishes the main calculation principles of the updated subsistence minimum, by extending the calculation perimeter from the territorial point of view, increasing the food energy value per person as well improving the structure of the minimum consumption basket for various age categories.

The government also approved the amendment and supplement of the regulation on the recognition and equivalence of highly-scientific and didactical-scientific qualification obtained abroad, approved via the government’s decision No 472 of 6 May 2004. The decision is meant to adjust the provisions of the regulation to the rigours of the EU legislation in the sector.

Also today, the government amended the decision on the compensation of the medication covered by the compulsory health insurance. Thus, medication that contains more than two active substances would be as well included on the list. In this context, Leanca said the improvement of the compensation mechanism should be a continuous process, as it increases the citizens’ access to vital medicines and thus helps save public money, like in the insulin case. In this sense, the interim premier required Justice Minister Oleg Efrim and Health Minister Andrei Usatii to ensure as soon as possible the enforcement of all the legal procedures needed to make public the order on the approval of the compensated-medication list in Moldova’s official paper Monitorul Oficial, so that people with diabetes could immediately benefit for free from this medication at any pharmacy in the country.

Also today, the acting government approved a decision on the organisation of recreation activities for teenagers during their summer break in 2013. According to the decision, relevant institutions must complete all the necessary preparations by 20 May 2013 in order to open the summer recreation season in time.

At the end of the meeting, the ministers approved a decision, thus making a string of technical amendments to Moldova’s list of delegates at the Joint Control Commission (CUC). In this context, at the interim prime minister’s requirement, Deputy Prime Minister for Reintegration Eugen Carpov informed the ministers of the results of his today’s working visit to Varnita village. Carpov said local citizens showed full understanding and confidence in the Moldovan government’s decision to avoid the appearance of uncontrolled and provocative reactions as well as its intention to promote confidence-building measures and maintain stability in the Security Zone.