– I’m afraid we are on the verge of a rather serious social catastrophe, and now it is urgently necessary for the government to do something. But I’m afraid they don’t understand how serious it is, Mímir Kristjánsson (Rødt) tells Dagbladet.
Despite the messages on the ever longer lines for food, if no additional measures directly targeting social assistance recipients were foreseen in the budgetary agreement with SV.
There wasn’t even a supervisor’s promise of streamlined case management for welfare payments, nothing The joint organization also advocated on behalf of the municipal Nav employees.
– Bags are often empty of food
Now Rødt is calling on the government to override the Storting to implement a crisis solution before Christmas.
– Hopeless
– Now the cold is coming for real, and with it the electricity prices are also increasing further. I’m not sure how this will turn out. But when people are freezing and can’t afford food, then the welfare state has failed. So we have to find the measures quickly, Kristjánsson tells Dagbladet.
Prior to the weekend, it was reported that the Salvation Army ordered far more boxes of food for people who reported need before Christmas than they had in the past.
In Oslo, the increase was 37.5% over last year and a total of 510 new households have been registered since this summer. Even in Bergen and Trondheim, the Salvation Army ordered significantly more boxes of food than last year.
Many of these are people who have always been self-sufficient, they point out.
– People have to choose: food or medicine?
– We have had a big increase since the summer and it was very big in November. It only increases. There are many who are asking for help, manager Irene Mathiasen at Slumstasjonen in Oslo told P4 news ahead of the weekend.
The same concern also came recently by a number of other voluntary organisations.
Ask for overtaking
Kristjánsson believes that the most important thing now may not be whether someone, contrary to presumption, gets a few crowns too many, but that no one in Norway’s welfare state should freeze or starve.
This is also why Rødt has advocated several immediate measures, explains Kristjánsson.
Among them is a NOK 1,000 Christmas bonus per social welfare recipient, plus an extra NOK 1,000 per child.
In addition, Rødt has made a proposal for the presence of a supervisor to support simplified case processing at Nav’s social services, similar to that applied during corona. According to this, the Nav offices were, among other things, encouraged to be more moderate with the conditions related to the sale of housing or property in order to obtain social assistance.
But Rødt’s proposal will not be considered in the Storting until February.
One in five is in trouble
Kristjánsson points out that it is too late, so he calls on the government to do something that he points out they are usually not very keen on:
– We therefore ask the government to put a regulatory change and an instruction on the table, or rather that they pass through the Storting. And it’s not often that you do this, but here you just have to stick your finger out.
Broken heart
When Nav employees have been challenged on what can be done for quick effect, then it is indeed a Nav supervisor, FO leader Mimmi Kvisvik also told Dagbladet recently.
Kristjánsson points out that when this measure actually worked during corona, it should after all be a “narrow issue” that the government should implement now.
– But it seems there was a much greater understanding of the crisis back then, even though now the queues for food are longer. It is therefore more serious now, says Kristjánsson.
– This is absolutely heartbreaking stuff, and there is absolutely no need for the government to dwell on this. This should be an easy thing to do for a government stemming from the most leftist Storting ever, concludes Kristjánsson.
