Draft law on social services for elder people discussed in Tashkent

The discussion was organized by the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of Population of Uzbekistan and the UNDP within the joint project “Improving quality of social service delivery for persons with disabilities and lonely elderly people in Uzbekistan”.

The draft law was developed to execute presidential resolution “On state programme “The Year of attention and care of elder generation” and directed at improving social protection of people, who need state assistance.

Uzbekistan creates complex system of providing social services to people, who need additional social protection. Annually, over 100,000 people received social services due to state budget and over 150 billion soums directed to this direction.

Special services are provided by over 700 state organizations, working under the system of Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of Population, Ministry of Public Education, Ministry of Healthcare and others.

The draft law includes norms, envisaging introduction of state standards for quality of social services, organization of new types of social services, improve responsibility of the state organizations, providing social services, etc.

Such NGOs as Federation of Trust Unions of Uzbekistan, Mahalla Foundation, Nuroniy Foundation, Republican center for social adaptation of children and other local and foreign organizations participated in the discussions of the draft law.

Representatives of the NGOS made concrete proposals for improving the draft law, including proposal on providing equal rights in receiving social services to jailed persons. The participants also offered to include outreach work notion to the document.