Today the meeting of mothers concerning decrease of the childbirth benefit and cancellation of the maternity benefit took place nearby the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. Mothers are indignant at actions of the state related to saving money namely on children and not on deputies and officials and they demand to give them back that payoffs.

Those withdrawn funds are frequently sole income source for mothers and the Government puts them to the wall by taking payoffs away. Moreover, that coerces mothers to go out to meetings related to such actions of the state in increasing frequency. Besides Kyiv, such actions took place at Ivano-Frankivsk, Dnipropetrovsk and other cities.

As the human rights advocate of Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union Maksym Shcherbatiuk notices, such actions of the state remain unapprehended and wrong, especially in relation to cancellation of maternity benefit, which was one of the most targeted benefits of all kinds of benefits for families with children by its essence. Whereas the Government has gone for substantial decrease of social expenses, so “professional” benefits for deputies, prosecutors and other kinds of aid, with which a man is provided independently of whether he needs it or not, should have been decreased at first place and by no means maternity benefit. However, our Government has decided otherwise, by which as for me has significantly cut the scope of social security of the most vulnerable groups of population.

It should be noted that even Office for Research and Evaluation of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine yet before the adoption of said changes highlighted that cancellation of these payoffs for children is violation of Article 22 of the Constitution of Ukraine and breaches basic principle of Article 48 in relation to the sufficient living standard for oneself and a family.

More than 3,000 signatures are already collected for the purpose of constitution rights recovery under the petition to the Government related to bringing back maternity benefits http://www.petitions247.net/doglyad and number of signatures grows up further. This address is already sent to deputies and governors.

Besides that, the constitutional submission from people’s deputies on unconstitutionality of respected changes is under the consideration of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine now.