Where Is the Boundary between the Poverty Reduction State Program and Its Efficiency?

Irina Chochua

How efficient is Poverty Reduction State Program in Georgia? How real are those criteria which are used to list impoverished people who should get allowances from the state? The Human Rights Center got interested in the problem after many discontent people applied to the center for help.

Their complaints were equal:  Every suitor says that socially unprotected people get rating points illegally. Although the Statistics Department permanently monitors several families, the number of the discontent families does not reduce.

Nana Tavberidze is 54 years old lonely woman. There are only two chairs, a table, a bed, a wardrobe and a few plates in her damp one-room flat. She lived in the flat together with her sick mother before 2007 and received the allowance. After her mother died, Social Agency stopped the assistance. Nana applied to the agency again. Although after the death of Lili Buadze death the family has not bought anything new, Nana Tavberidze got high rating point as a result of the repeated examination. So she cannot get allowance. The Social Agency explained:  She was young for the retired age. She is a musician. Tavberidze worked at music schools as a teacher for many years. However, she has been able to find the job recently and nowadays she gathers bottles to sell and the neighbors assist her.

Nana Tavberidze appealed to the Human Rights Centre for help on 10 September. Social Agency explained:”We have discovered some changes in this case. Although the family has not got rich after the death of Lili Buadze, the expanses and bills were reduced. According to the special formula the last indicator shows that there are gaps in them and this occasion is the clear example”, said the Head of the public relations department of the Social Agency Eka Alavidze.

The lawyers of the Human Rights Centre provide legal aid to the impoverished families who could not get assistance from the government but they had to. However, the main reason for this problem is the gaps in the Poverty Reduction State Program which is admitted by the Agency staff. Eka Kobesashvili, the lawyer for the Human Rights Centre says that poor people depend on the Social Agents sensitivity, who examines families and assesses their general social-economic conditions.

A lot of people appealed to our organization during the last 6 months to get legal assistance on the phone or personally. They explain that they are in the data base of the socially excluded people; according to their statement social agents examine their social-economic conditions and then grant high rating points. We were trying to find out why these facts happen, but we got grounded answers neither officially nor during personal conversations”, said Eka Kobesashvili.

Similar cases show that the methodology of the state program is not effective. It should be mentioned that they work continually to make this system more efficient and improved. Different organizations are involved in this process, which are collaborating with the Social Agency. Four times in the year Statistics Department observes 3000 families and estimates the efficiency of the indicators which are mentioned in the declaration. Similar indicators tend to getting outdated. The organizations demand to examine families again and again and it had positive result. According to the official data, the ministry of healthcare carried out the special activities to improve the research methodology. The presentation of the last report will be held in October.

Moris Tsamalashvili, the deputy director of the Social Subsidy Agency, speaks about the gaps which are in the methodology of distributing the allowances:” There are registered 600 000 families in our data base, who appealed for the allowance.160 000 family of them get the allowance. We work by stage: Social Agent goes to each family, helps them to fill in the declaration form and after that the family is granted with the points based on special formula. We calculate these points by statistic methods and of course it might be wrong. There is not a single program in the world, which does not have similar shortcomings. Though there are other approved methods of the estimation in the world too, but the most exact method is granting points. There is only 20 percent possibility of making mistake. We mean two main problems: The people who do not need assistance they get this and on the contrary, families who need assistance they do not get it. We try to reduce this kind of problems. We will increase the participation of the local community in this program. Besides that, three years working showed gaps, which we analyzed in the practice and now we have the suggestions how to improve our work. But we cannot claim that we will achieve our goals at 100 percent. We will always have families which we do not help, but we will work on it permanently. The most important thing to get the best result is also how the different departments collaborate with each other. According to the International experts or institutions, this methodology is the one of the best in the world.  Though they give some recommendations to eradicate shortcomings and we will consider their recommendations. The most important for us is to reduce the mistakes.”