Increased Controls on Child Allowances: Suspicions of Illegal Benefits from the Diaspora

Over 406,000 children in Kosovo receive the increased monthly payments from the government, but it is suspected that a portion of them no longer live in the country. The worrying emigration figures published by the Statistics Agency have prompted the Ministry of Finance to launch an extensive verification operation to clean up the list of beneficiaries of those who no longer have a legal right.

In just one year, more than 37,000 residents have left the territory of Kosovo. This reality has raised concerns that entire families who have relocated through family reunification continue to unjustly collect aid from state social schemes. Precisely to stop this phenomenon, authorities have begun a rigorous process of data control.

Liridon Llozani, media advisor at the Ministry of Finance, Labor and Transfers, confirmed that violations have been discovered during inspections. “There is a number of those who have benefited and who were not residents of Kosovo. It is a considerable number of them who have been subjected to the control. Since the process is ongoing, I do not have the exact figure of how many of them have been removed from the benefit scheme for child allowances,” he stated.

The current system of budget fund distribution is facing serious remarks from specialists in the field. According to them, the lack of a clear regulatory framework and the lack of communication between electronic databases among institutions creates favorable ground for abuse with public money.

Social and educational issues expert Bardha Qirezi stressed the need for legal regulation. “I see the problem of allowances as unregulated aid by law, which is given immediately, without clear criteria, and distributed without an interconnection of systems that register the population, to also see the unemployment of the population. In our system, only those persons who register at employment offices are considered unemployed, while we all know that a large part of the population does not register there,” she expressed.

Faced with these suspicions, the Ministry of Finance has warned of drafting a new legal basis that will completely discipline this sector. In parallel, a massive action of comparing information is being developed, using cross-institutional data to identify irregular cases.

“The issue of child allowances, just like some other social schemes, will be regulated by law. All the criteria and forms of benefit will be defined there. The verification process is being done through the e-Kosova platform, but also through the Department of Social Schemes, by comparing our data with the data held by other institutions,” Llozani added.

From the moment the value of child allowances increased, the number of applicants also increased significantly. The main challenge for authorities now is to ensure that millions of euros from citizens’ taxes are destined only for families residing in Kosovo. Until the approval of the new legislation, digital filters will be the decisive mechanism that will determine which individuals will continue to benefit from these schemes.