Public Chamber: 77,000 needy children in Astrakhan Region

The Astrakhan Region has 153,000 families, in which 231,000 minors are reared. 50,000 families are needy, and they have 77,000 children, as reported by Ekaterina Lukyanenko, regional minister for social development and labour.

Vitaly Arakelyan, Chairman of the Public Chamber, has stated, when opening the session of the Public Chamber of the Astrakhan Region on the problem of protection of socially vulnerable children, that growth of unemployment and destruction in the 1990s of former Soviet scout organization have resulted in degradation of the society.

In particular, according to Mr Arakelyan, the Astrakhan Region now has more sick children; neglected and homeless children appeared, and kids from needy families are doomed to be outsiders.

According to his story, several regional agencies are dealing with social protection of unsafe children. "The main trouble is lack of their coordination; they have no unified regional programme and no programmes in municipal education formations," said the Chairman.

Regional Minister Ekaterina Lukyanenko told about the great efforts undertaken by her Ministry; however, she did not try to evade the problem. According her story, the region has 9000 single mothers, 12,000 families with many children, 2000 families lacking due conditions to bring up children and 4000 families with children-invalids.

According to Ms Lukyanenko, today the sum of children's allowance in the Astrakhan Region makes 141 roubles, which is "not a good sum", but the federal power refused to donate the allowances, as reported by the IA "Vysota 102".

According to the Minister, the problem is also in lack of any aggregate database of unsafe children: she has some figures, the militia has other figures, while the Ministry for Education has its own data, as reported by the IA "Avers".