Budapest municipality to launch utility support scheme
The Budapest municipality is launching a utility price support scheme where people with low incomes will be eligible for 48,000 forints (EUR 117) a year, to be deducted from their utility bills, Mayor Gergely Karacsony said in a video posted on Facebook on Wednesday.
Low-income families raising children, people living with disabilities or chronic illness and retirees with their pensions below subsistence level will be eligible for the support, he said. Elderly people whose pensions are below the “real average” pension will be eligible for 24,000 forints annually, he added.
The scheme, Karacsony said, aimed to fulfil his election promise to extend the “social care model” founded in Budapest’s 14th district when he was mayor there.
“Social subsidies would be basically a government task, but now they are busy elsewhere, looking for enemies rather than solutions. Therefore, it is time we stepped up instead,” he said.
The scheme will be launched from October 1, he added.
