Damascus-SANA
The efforts of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor and its subsidiaries during 2021 focused on caring for the family, strengthening the social protection system, expanding the funding agencies for small and micro projects implemented within the program to support and enable the demobilized from compulsory and reserve service, empowering the Syrian countryside, and restoring a number of social welfare service institutes in various governorates.
The issuance of Law No. 21 on the rights of the child on August 15 is a qualitative achievement for the ministry, as it targets a wide age group from birth to 18 years and aims to strengthen the role of the state in its various public and private institutions in child protection and care.
With the aim of enhancing individual and collective awareness of the pivotal place of the family as a basis for the structure and recovery of society, the Ministry and the Syrian Commission for Family and Population Affairs launched on March 2 the national campaign “Syrian Family Days.” The campaign provided, for a month, activities and events in the social, educational, health, cultural, environmental, sports, intellectual, research, awareness and training fields. It included different segments of society and age groups.
The Ministry continued to restore and rehabilitate a number of social care institutes partially or completely affected by terrorism in a number of areas, including the institutes for hearing and mental disabilities, cerebral palsy and social care in Shain in the Homs countryside, the Institute for Mental Disabilities in Ayyash in the Deir ez-Zor countryside, and the Institutes of Hearing and Intellectual Disabilities in Lattakia.
Within the framework of training and capacity building of cadres, the Ministry launched on June 26 a training program for workers in its social service institutes on methods of raising awareness of drug harm and effective communication with adolescents and youth to achieve better results in this field.
On November 17, the Ministry signed a roadmap with the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of the Russian Federation to cooperate in the field of caring for persons with disabilities and to exchange experiences in the fields of rehabilitation, social integration and prosthetics.
In cooperation with a number of international organizations, the Ministry implemented a series of projects, including the cash aid project for persons with disabilities with UNICEF, benefiting about 11,000 children, the project to protect children’s rights through education, media and art with the International Labor Organization, and the Masari project with the European Institute for Cooperation and Development, and the start of a project to print curricula Education in Braille with the United Nations Population Fund.
The Syrian Organization for Persons with Disabilities, Amal, completed 60 snail implants, secured 623 hearing aids in cooperation with the World Health Organization, served 2,500 people in the auditory survey center, provided 3,600 psychomotor sessions, rehabilitated 45 children in the ranks of the autism center, and graduated 4 children from the center educationally prepared. With 19,300 speech and language assessment sessions for 700 beneficiaries, 13 children were educationally and educationally prepared for the next educational stage.
During 2021, the Central Council for Persons with Disabilities continued to disburse the financial grant provided to students with disabilities in the middle and university levels, and the number of students benefiting reached 400 students.
And the National Fund for Social Aid expanded to the financiers of small and medium projects that it provides to the groups benefiting from its programs. On August 12, the Fund signed an agreement with the People’s Credit Bank to grant loans with a ceiling of “one million” pounds, and amended the agreement it signed last year with the National Bank for Microfinance to include more categories besides The Fund continues to pay the monthly bonuses for the demobilized who benefit from the program to support and empower the demobilized.
The value of pensions and compensations disbursed by the General Organization for Social Insurance during 2021 amounted to about 325 billion Syrian pounds, and the total number of those registered with insurance exceeded two million workers from the public and private sectors, and more than 4,000 retirees benefited from the loans of retirees.
Muhannad Suleiman
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