In the modern Ukrainian reality a standard term “internally displaced person” hides complicated problems, sometimes even tragedies related to resettlement, work, breaking the bonds with a small motherland. When moving from the Crimea to the mainland, first and foremost, immigrants use job searches as means of living. But harsh realities, which are not typical for other groups of immigrants, await them. Everything that the state is able to offer them is minimum unemployment pay.
The issue of providing social assistance to IDPS is regulated by the Law of Ukraine “On protection of rights and freedoms of citizens and legal regime for the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine”. Article 7 of this Law guarantees the social assistance for internally displaced persons in case of unemployment by their registration, providing a status of unemployed and unemployment benefit payments depending on a length of pensionable service.
Instead this Law hides a catch rule. This is because getting a status of unemployed along with an appropriate financial assistance is performed strictly according to the data of the State register of obligatory national social insurance.
The State register of obligatory national social insurance is an electronic system that stores information about all social payments (taxes) of Ukrainian citizens including payments to the Social Insurance Fund for unemployment, sickness, invalidity, etc. In other words, it is impossible to get any kind of social care without its data.
Fund’s employees act according to Art.7, para. 7 of the above-mentioned Law that says: “Before getting documents and information on the periods of employment, salary (income), pensionable service, unemployment benefit for this people (internally displaced persons – auth.) is provided in the minimum amount established by the executive board of the unemployment insurance Fund of Ukraine.”
The problem is that all internally displaced persons mainly have only a paper certificate of salary (income) from the previous place of employment. However, a certificate along with details of a pensionable service and facts about insurance contributions need to be confirmed by personalized data from the Unified State Register of insured persons in Ukraine. But there is no such information about internally displaced persons in this Register! After the annexation of the Crimea, namely since February 2014, the register has been blocked. So immigrants are provided with a minimum benefit in an amount of 544 hrivnas in case of unemployment.
What is lost? If there is information about a payment of insurance premiums (taxes) including the last 12 months (but it is only until February 2014) on electronic materials, then a person is entitled to unemployment benefits depending on a length of a pensionable service: up to 2 years – 50%, from 2 to 6 years – 55%, from 6 to 10 years – 60% and over 10 years – 70%.
To illustrate this point: an internally displaced person from the Crimea, who is a father of two children of minority age, PhD, Associate Professor and was working as a head of a university department, has an income statement and his pensionable service is more than 10 years while the last salary is 5 thousand hrivnas. After a long work search he applied to the Employment Center. At first he was refused but later he was promised to get an unemployed status with 544 hrivnas of financial assistance on the ground of the electronic data absence.
The staff of employment centers humanly tries to set immigrant’s mind at rest with promises to get in contact with Crimea via their own friends and, finally, offers to reapply officially in a month having all documents just to be registered. After that it will take at least 6 months of a job search performed by the Center before the moment of assistance’s assignment comes and only then the decision on granting unemployed status to a person.
Perhaps, this awkward mechanism explains a small number of immigrants asking for help. According to the State Emergency Service, as of September 26, 2014, a total number of internally displaced people in Ukraine is 295 318 persons. There are 18 055 persons who were moved from Crimea among them. 11 707 persons applied to employment centers, 2 074 persons are employed and 6 506 persons got an unemployed status (there is no information about internally displaced people here).
So, the solution of this problem consists in ineffectiveness of laws, which should be worked out with the involvement of migrants. Public organizations have such kind of experience, for example, a Coordination Board of internally displaced persons which have real information about a state of things in this area.
Members of a Coordination Board are experienced associate-lawyers who could work out effective rules of social security for immigrants. Declared but yet not created State Service on Crimea, Sevastopol and internally displaced persons could also improve the situation. It would coordinate monitoring of the situation of immigrants in all areas, implementation of already adopted laws and their compliance control, project planning of new laws. The President Petro Poroshenko also put emphasis on the need to create a Ministry on Crimea during his pre-election campaign.
