Parents may not see payments of 22 thousand for “school set”

The fate of the bill on annual assistance by September 1 is not yet known

Parliamentarians will consider a draft law on the annual payment by September 1 for families raising children from 6 to 18 years old (and disabled children under 23 years old) in the amount of 21,850 rubles. This payment, in theory, is intended to replace the “covid” 10 thousand, which were paid to Russian families with children four times, from 2019 to 2021.

The developers of the law, Righteous Russians, note that the indicated amount is the average cost of a “school set” to prepare for the new academic year. The explanatory note scrupulously lists the items whose total cost amounted to those same 22,000. For boys: 2 pairs of trousers, 3 shirts, a jumper, 2 T-shirts, a tracksuit, socks and golfs, summer shoes, warm boots and sneakers. For girls: 2 dresses and 2 skirts, 3 blouses, a jumper and 2 T-shirts, a tracksuit, as well as tights, socks and stockings, summer shoes, winter boots and sneakers. Also, the indicated amount includes 5 pieces of ballpoint pens and pencils, 4 notebooks of 12 sheets, a set of felt-tip pens, an album, a backpack and textbooks.

– I am preparing two children for school, I have already spent more than 50 thousand, – says Galina, mother of younger schoolchildren from Moscow. – One school sundress costs 2-3 thousand rubles, one pair of shoes for a son costs 4 thousand. I don’t know where these deputies got the prices and how they do their calculations? Or they immediately need to enter the regional coefficient as for the subsistence minimum. Because, in the regions – some prices, and others in Moscow and in the region. Everything is more expensive for us.

The explanatory note specifically noted that low-income families do not have enough gadgets. Therefore, a tablet was added to the kit for needy families and its cost – according to the deputies, 12,829 rubles. And the annual payment for the poor has been increased to 34,000 rubles.

One of the authors of the bill, Sergei Mironov, notes that “the costs of citizens for collecting children for school, technical schools and universities make up a significant part of the family budget.” And the incomes of our citizens are not growing, but on the contrary, they are falling. So families need “real support from the state” to support demographics. Therefore, in addition to the usual consideration by expert committees, the draft was sent personally to the speaker Vyacheslav Volodin. The source of financing for the payment for 2023 is the federal budget.

This is not the first attempt by A Just Russia to push through this bill. “School payments” have already been submitted to the State Duma in the past and the year before. And they failed. True, then the bill was talking about a monthly allowance for parents of schoolchildren in the amount of 10 thousand rubles. “I see it as a PR stunt and nothing more,” a source who is a member of the Ministry of Labor told MK. – The payment of 10 thousand was canceled because by 2021 we have fully built a line of social assistance for all categories of citizens in need. At the federal and municipal levels, assistance covers all ages of children and categories of families. There are payments for children from 0 to 1.5 years old, from 1.5 to 3, and from 3 to 7 years old, from 8 to 16, financial support for single parents, disabled people, pregnant women. Criteria for assessing “neediness” have been significantly softened. Therefore, if there is a lack of funds in the family, it is necessary to apply and provide the necessary documents. So, it is unlikely that this “law for 22 thousand” will even pass the first reading.