Prague will contribute to families threatened by inflation. You ignore seniors, criticize TOGETHER
In June of this year, the municipality allocated 308 million crowns to help the citizens of Prague threatened by high inflation, and another half a billion crowns for next year.
“We manage responsibly, we don’t spend money on nonsense, and that’s why we are able to help the people of Prague in difficult times. Thanks to the targeted measures and the provided finances, the average family with two children who get into trouble will be able to save up to 50,000 crowns per year. When the crisis deepens, we are ready to help expand even more,” said Deputy Mayor Pavel Vyhnánek (Praha Sobě).
Prague 4, which is the largest city district, will receive the highest contribution. 24.52 million crowns are already allocated from the municipality. The second highest will be received by the Prague 5 Town Hall, which will receive CZK 21.94 million. A little over 20 million CZK will be given to both the Prague 8 town hall and the tenth city district. The document must be approved by city councilors on Thursday.
Help has several herds
The city’s decision was criticized by the city’s opposition representative and mayor of Prague 2, Alexandra Udženija. According to her, the city administration ignores hundreds of thousands of Prague citizens, specifically senior citizens, disabled pensioners, people receiving early and widow’s pensions, and single parents. “All those who are identified by professional studies as the groups most at risk from the ongoing inflation and energy crisis are completely missing from the prepared program. The coalition decided to help families and children, which is good news, but they completely forgot about children over 15. I consider that discriminatory. It means that the municipal coalition has completely forgotten about the families who have high school students,” she said.
According to Uženija, the city had a surplus exceeding 12.5 billion crowns as of June 30. “This means that even if we helped all senior high school students and single parents with a one-time sum of eight thousand crowns, it would cost us approximately 4.5 billion,” the mayor explained, adding that she would prefer a targeted form of help.
Prague coalition representative and mayor of Prague 7, Jan Čižinský, rejected the criticism, according to whom it is unjustified, because the above-mentioned volume of money approved by the municipality in June, the so-called aid package for the people of Prague, has several parts. “Its other pillars will gradually come into play. This is a pillar aimed at families of children from kindergartens and primary schools, the next pillar will be aimed at seniors and the last one at borrowers,” he said.
According to Mayor Zdeňko Hřiba, the criticism of Udženije makes no sense, as it is necessary to take into account the entire aid package.
The help to the people was welcomed and appreciated by the chairman of the ANO opposition representatives, Ondřej Prokop. However, they blamed the city for only delegating the help to the town hall and at the same time not providing it earlier. “The only thing they actually came up with in four months is that they will send money from the municipality to the city districts, a real solution to help, thus throwing Prague on the shoulders of the mayors. I’m sure they can handle it, it’s just a shame they didn’t get the money sooner. They could already distribute them,” said Prokop.