Several dozens of refugees from Donbas on June 13 held a picket at the building of the Ukrainian Social Policy Ministry demanding the repealing of the Cabinet's decree on social payments to internally displaced persons that they find to be discriminatory.
Specifically, participants in the rally organized by the public movement Fellow Countrymen have brought mattresses, saying they will spend the night at the entrance to the ministry until the administration changes its attitude to internally displaced persons.
“Our rally is caused the adoption of the Cabinet of Ministers’ Decree No. 637, which is outrageous discrimination against displaced persons. Officials have decided that people will not receive social payments until they confirm their place of residence. Under this decree mobile groups composed of social service workers, SBU officials migration service officials and the national police will be created to check displaced persons’ places of residence. They will visit residences and check if the displaced person is there. If the person is not found there, no payment will be granted,” Hennadiy Borysychev, leader of the movement Fellow Countrymen, told Interfax-Ukraine.
Besides the fact that the verification procedure is humiliating, the decree is impossible to implement, he said. “In every city of Ukraine there are from 15 to 200,000 displaced persons, our total number is around 2.5 million people. We understand that these commissions physically cannot visit all addresses. And social payments will not be provided until this actual residence is verified,” Borysychev said.
Among other demands, the protesters insisted on the adoption by the government of a program to provide temporary housing to displaced persons, compensations to internally displaced persons for lost housing (or access to it) and property as a result of military action in the zone of the special operation, give displaced persons back the right to vote in elections of all levels of the Ukrainian administration, and also the resignation of Pavlo Rozenko, deputy prime minister and social policy minister.
