YOUNG MOTHERS RECEIVE INCOME ALLOWANCE

The Supreme Court has awarded the monthly HUF 6700 unpaid income allowance for young mothers on maternity leave between January 28, 2000 and March 7, 2002. This ruling will cost the budget about HUF 25-30 billion.

’If another council of the Supreme Court rules in a similar way on July 2, the government will pay the allowances’, said J. Zoltán Gál government spokesman. The decision came after the Somogy County Court already awarded the allowances in three cases though the Supreme Court modified the ruling to three years instead of five and the sum is understood without interest. The basis of the decision is a law passed in 1994 which was in force until March 2002. J. Zoltán Gál has made it clear that this was caused by the negligence of the previous government while Péter Harrach MP (Fidesz), former Minister of Social and Family Affairs said this was a typical Socialist lie as it was the Socialists who forgot to repeal the law in 1996 when they amended it. ’The Socialists committed not only political crimes when they presented Hungary with the ’Bokros parcel’, they made such administrative blunders, too’, said Péter Harrach to Magyar Nemzet.

Translated by Péter Szentmihályi Szabó