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Radicova: Scandals of Former Gov't Complicate Fight Against Poverty
Tuesday 14 December 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, December 14 (TASR) - Scandals that emerged at the Labour, Social Affairs and the Family Ministry under the management of former minister Viera Tomanova (Smer-SD) have made it more complicated to acquire financial means for the fight against poverty in Slovakia, said Prime Minister Iveta Radicova on Tuesday.
Radicova was speaking at the Concluding Conference of the European Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion. As examples of ministry waste, she pointed to the pilot project of so-called social enterprises and an analysis carried out for job centres for the excessive price of €636,000.
"These are the exclamation marks that multiply the controlling mechanisms afterwards. This is often so significant that those who deal with marginalised groups and draw up honest projects can't gain access to refunding. We're trying to find a way to prevent the misuse of EU Funds ... so that when I visit the U.S.A. I won't be welcomed with headlines in the New York Times or Herald Tribune about the Slovak Republic being the biggest tunneler [of EU Funds]," said Radicova.
This problem was also highlighted at the conference by labour ministry state secretary Lucia Nicholsonova. "Means designed for the target group of people who live on the poverty line have ended up in the pockets of people who certainly didn't need them. Huge amounts of money went into useless documents that they call analyses, and we can't work with them as they are unusable," added Nicholsonova.
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