The problem with IDP payments lasted 5 months and was resolved in 2 weeks

Publication date: April 24, 2023

Thanks to the lawyers of the NGO “Cherkasy Human Rights Center”, the resettled woman received all the funds owed by the state. This required legal advice, a written appeal to the relevant department, and a professional approach to knowledge of the situation with payments.

Mariana* is a resettled woman who is raising her son alone. After obtaining IDP status at her new place of residence, in April 2022, the woman received a housing allowance for herself and her child. Everything was fine until, in November 2022, payments for social assistance for accommodation stopped coming to her account.

Appeals to the local social protection department, according to Mariana, did not yield results: the department’s employees could not clearly explain anything. They said, everything is fine, the budget just doesn’t have the funds for these payments at the moment, and she needs to wait. Months passed, but the situation did not change.

So, in March 2023, the woman turned to the Cherkasy Human Rights Center for legal assistance.

• In the interests of the client, we have prepared and sent an electronic request to the social security department to provide information on the reasons for the termination of payments. It turned out that during all this time the data about Mariana and her child were never transferred to the new system, – explained the organization’s lawyer Maryna Kuprykova.

Commenting on the current situation, the lawyer noted that the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine Resolution No. 332 of March 20, 2022, defined the mechanism for providing accommodation assistance to internally displaced persons. Such assistance is provided to IDPs monthly from the month of application for each internally displaced person: UAH 3,000 — for persons with disabilities and children, UAH 2,000 — for other persons. Assistance is paid for a full month, regardless of the date of application for its provision.

• However, as a result of the transition of the social protection administrations to the new Unified Information System of the Social Sphere, there were massive delays in payments, which were of a purely technical nature and were resolved manually when contacting the administration in person, – Maryna Kuprykova explained.

In the end, a written appeal gave a result quite quickly. During the next two weeks, Mariana received payments for herself and the child for the entire term of the debt.

*Name has been changed for ethical reasons.

The material was created within the framework of the “Regional Coordinators” Initiative. The initiative is launched with the support of the international charity platform GlobalGiving and the Legal Empowerment Fund (Fund for Global Human Rights program) and the Legal Development Network.

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