Comment on Decree No. 342 of 5 August 2013

    On 5 August the President of the Republic of Belarus signed Decree No. 342, which amended Decree No. 200 “On administrative procedures performed by government agencies and other organizations upon applications of citizens” of 26 April 2010.

    The Decree brings the list of the administrative procedures that government agencies and other organizations have to perform upon applications filed by citizens in conformance with the law “On state welfare payments for families with children” of 29 December 2012.

    In view of the law the Decree has specified the names of several administrative procedures, which are followed for appropriating welfare payments for families with children as well as the organizations that citizens can apply to in order to get the welfare payments. The Decree also specifies the list of documents required to get the benefits and timelines for appropriating welfare payments to families with children.

    In particular, citizens can get maternity grants, benefits granted for children under 3, children over 3 in several family types via their employers, education institutions, government employment and social welfare agencies, as well as clinical residency institutions. Citizens, who are registered with agencies of the Social Protection Fund of the Labor and Social Protection Ministry as mandatory premium payers, will have to contact the said agencies for temporary incapacity allowance due to childcare.

    For the sake of getting maternity grants and child birth grants women will have to produce extra documents in addition to existing ones. The extra documents include an income statement if the applicant worked for six months for different employers prior to the month the applicant became eligible for the maternity grant. The additional papers are required because the salary used to calculate the grant does not include all the transactions, which are connected with mandatory insurance premiums, and the salary cannot be confirmed by personalized accounting data that the Fund possesses. For some other kinds of benefits citizens will have to produce some documents that they personally have (for instance, a marriage certificate of the stepmother (stepfather) of the child, a copy of the resolution of the local executive body to grant guardian rights to the guardians).

    If additional data has to be requested from other government agencies or organizations, then the procedure to appropriate such benefits will take one month. If no additional data has to be requested, such benefits will be assigned within ten days.

    The Decree comes into force as of the publication date.