Dr.Orneda Gega Hoxha1, Dr.Rita Loloçi2
Authors country of origin: Albania 1/2
Institutional affiliation:1/2Faculty member of the Department of Education at the University of “Aleksander Moisiu”.
Email address: ornedagega@gmail.com, ritaloloci@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
The poverty in Albania is not only related to the individual, but also to the system that this country has inherited. Unfortunately in our country, a large part of families is still living living in absolute poverty. Albanian politicians in the early 1990s argued that the redistribution of income should be estimated based on the best interest of all members of the society, not only to the poorest ones.
In the given years, the first structures responsible for social care services for each Municipality were Law no. 7710, dated 18.05.1993, and Law no. 9355, dated 10.03.05 “On social assistance and services” which were followed by Decisions, Instructions of the respective Ministry.
Based on the gaps of previous laws, in 2016 the Law no. 121 “On social care services in the Republic of Albania” was approved and pursuant to the given law, Albania became part of the Digital Agenda for Europe (DAE), taking concrete steps through the construction of the online portal E-Albania.
The purpose of this study aims at presenting how the new scoring system has been influencing the persons excluded from receiving economic assistance and the psycho-social consequences for the given category.
The method used in this study is the qualitative method. The instrument used is the semi-structured interview. The target groups interviewed were the heads of families excluded from Economic Assistance. Fifteen heads of families were interviewed in order to obtain information with regards to the reason for not receiving economic assistance, how the exemption from NE benefit has affected the family relationship and how they estimate the resolution of the given matter.
Based on the information retrieved from the interviews, it resulted that most of the respondents were not familiar with the new digital scheme. They did not know the reason for being excluded from receiving the economic assistance scheme. Economic assistance was a source of income received from the state and used again to repay debts to the state (payment of utility bills), and in the lack of this source, consequently they remained debtors to the state. The lack of the only source of income brought conflicts in the family, violence, and often falling into addictions such as alcohol, gambling, etc.
Keywords; economic assistance, new digital scheme, psycho-social consequences.
Volume 4.No.2(2021): April (Social Sciences Session)
ISSN 2661-2666 (Online) International Scientific Journal Monte (ISJM)
ISSN 2661-264X (Print)
DOI : 10.33807/monte.20211906
DOI URL: https://doi.org/10.33807/monte.20211906
Full Text: PDF
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)