The Knesset Ombudsman Committee held a session on Tuesday, 21 Shevat, to discuss state aid to non-profit organizations. Committee Chairman MK Yisrael Eicher began the meeting explaining, “The current budget for Kimcha D’pischa for 5778 is NIS 3.7 million, and the Ministry of Social Affairs has approached the Finance Ministry to receive an additional NIS 15 million. The State considered a budget of only NIS 9. This is shame!

“The number of poor people rises from yomtov to yomtov to holiday. The number of people needing food baskets increases every year, and the state, through welfare offices in various cities, is the one that directs the weaker populations to help with charities, but it does not increase the amount of support for each basket.”

Eichler attacked the Welfare Ministry: “I do not know a lot of budgets that write a ridiculous symbolic amount, and then you have to come begging for the addition every time. The great merit of the charitable organizations, which actually do what the state was supposed to do, and that is to ensure that there are no hungry people on yomim tovim, so they have to beg for tiny budgets of a few shekels per basket? ”

Representatives of the charitable organizations told the committee members: “The amount we receive from the Welfare Ministry on each basket is delusional and humiliating, and we feel that we are abandoned and neglected. The sums we get are enough for a bag of chocolate milk and a roll.”

“We helped with NIS 14 million and the aid we received from the Welfare Ministry is NIS 300,000, which is the whole story,” said one of the NGO directors who participated in the discussion.

The Director of the Budget and Economics Division of the Ministry of Social Affairs informed the committee chairman: “Our budget is transparent and well known. Unfortunately, we do not have food security. Unfortunately, some procedure has been formulated that deals with allocating a low budget for Kimcha D’pischa and towards the yomim tovim, another budget is given. This year, we have not yet closed the annual supplement, but our ambition is to reach NIS 18 million, like last year. ”

At the end of the discussion, the directors of the non-profit organizations presented the bureaucratic meticulousness imposed on them by the Welfare Ministry and even the minor budgets are not allocated to them in cases of error in the number of identity cards of the needy.

MK Eichler concluded the discussion by saying: “Thanks to the welfare ministry, this state calls itself a Jewish state, it has no other sign. There are budgets for the needy who have different characteristics and never transfer from one to another. For some reason, it is precisely here that there is a sense that they are transferring from the budget of Kimcha D’pischa to finance the pilot budget for food security. It is important to say that food security is important, and I welcome the response to our request by including Bnei Brak’s poor in the project, but it should not harm the budget of Kimcha D’pischa.

“We hope that the budget will increase to NIS 18 million by the end of the year, as promised at least for NIS 18 million, and the committee wishes to determine that a declaration by a CPA and an attorney representing the organization will confirm the receipt of the fruits of food donations. In order to serve as a recognition by the Ministry for support, and the committee will ask the finance and welfare ministers to increase the budget so that people in need receive a grant for yomtov with dignity.”

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)