site.btaOutgoing Social Policy Minister: No Easter Bonuses for Pensioners, Pensions to Be Raised from Mid-year

There will be no Easter bonuses for pensioners, as the outgoing Government is aiming at a permanent increase in their income and from mid-year pensions will be raised by 11%, outgoing Labour and Social Policy Minister Ivanka Shalapatova told Nova TV on Saturday.

"I have not received a numerical evaluation for my work, I have a wonderful communication with both (outgoing Deputy Prime Minister) Mariya Gabriel and (outgoing Prime Minister) Nikolay Denkov. We talked, they know all the measures in our governance programme, each of which is moving without delay, so we have achieved full implementation of our objectives. At this stage, I have no indication that there is dissatisfaction with the results we are achieving," Shalapatova added, but noted that the decision whether she will remain at her current position after the rotation of Government is not hers to make. 

"The opportunity for working citizens and the unemployed to gain access to digital competency training was delayed for four years. This was caught up and on December 21 last year we announced the procedure - within two years half a million Bulgarians can and already have access to free training on the website of the Employment Agency, this is a programme that is already running," explained the Minister.

"The main concern of our ministry is that the workforce should be competent, have high productivity, then they can expect better wages," she said. The minimum wage was also increased by a record almost 20%, the Ministry started activating the economically inactive people with a very intensive mediation activity - 45,000 people have already been activated on the labour market last year alone, this is 38% more than the previous year, activation projects under the National Plan for People with Disabilities are also already underway, Shalapatova underlined. 

The resource that the social partners attracted by applying through the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy under the Human Resources Development Programme is BGN 52 million, Shalapatova further noted. "They are our logical and very good partner in dealing with the challenges of labour," she noted.