The cabinet today approved the NIS 1 billion a year national plan for Holocaust survivors drawn up by Minister of Finance Yair Lapid and Minister of Social Services Meir Cohen. The Ministry of Finance says that the plan will settle the rights of 200,000 Holocaust survivors living in Israel, and that the plan would be implemented as soon as possible out of a sense of historic obligation, urgency, and realization that time was running out for the survivors.
The cabinet authorized Lapid and Cohen to submit the necessary legislative amendments within 21 days, so that the Knesset could approve them during the upcoming session.
The plan includes equalizing the rights of ghettoes and concentration camp survivors who immigrated to Israel after 1953 to the rights of the survivors who immigrated earlier, at a cost of NIS 277 million a year; raising the minimum pension for survivors to NIS 2,200 a month; free medication for survivors, at a cost of NIS 130 million; an annual grant of NIS 3,600 to Holocaust survivors who were not incarcerated in extermination camps or ghettoes and immigrated after 1953, at a cost of NIS 288 million a year; an annual grant of NIS 2,000 to 9,000 needy Holocaust survivors, at a cost of NIS 18 million; a pension of NIS 2,000 a month to surviving spouses of Holocaust survivors from the fourth year of their death, at a cost of NIS 65 million a year; increased social services, at a cost of NIS 40 million a year; psychological assistance, at a cost of NIS 30 million a year; and easing means testing for survivors, at a cost of NIS 55 million a year.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on April 27, 2014
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