Germany’s international Pro Humanitate organization comes across serious problems at providing social assistance to Moldova, Organization Chairman Dirk Hartig stated at a news conference at Infotag on Monday.

 

Hartig said the Organization has been rendering help to Moldova for 25 years already, during which it has helped needy groups by means of various social projects to a total amount of more than 60 million euros.

 

“But unfortunately, the Moldovan authorities put artificial obstacles to us. For instance, our trucks always come across extra expenditures at the customs”, said the chairman.

 

Dirk Hartig referred to a recent example when “detergents worth 70 thousand euros intended for local schools were delivered to the republic. For that, we had to pay at the customs ‘an ecological tax’, which I had never heard about before”.

 

He said the Organization wouldn’t be able to receive from the Moldovan authorities premises for storing things from the humanitarian assistance. In Germany, there is no possibility, either, to store humanitarian assistance for Moldova.

 

Hartig expressed bewilderment that the Moldovan Ministry of Labor, Social Protection and Family would not react to his requests to organize a roundtable conference to discuss the above problems together with local officials.

 

“We sent our inquiry to the Ministry concerning conference organization yet last June 24. At the end of August, Deputy Minister Gheorghe Turcanu promised that we would receive an official reply in 4 weeks. Now it is October, but only yesterday we received a reply from the Ministry – a negative one. That was really a slap in the face of our whole Organization”, said the chairman.

 

Dirk Hartic voiced pity that Minister Valentina Buliga cares to reply to the Organization’s requests very-very rarely. Unlike her, former President of Moldova Vladimir Voronin promoted the Organization’s work, Hartig said.

 

“Minister Buliga has thus proved her professional incompetence. I don’t care which political party she represents. She is a bad minister because she prevents foreign social assistance from reaching the people who badly need it. With such a behavior, we will cancel all projects, so their financing will be shouldered on the local authorities. As for us, we will start helping another country”, said Hartig.

 

He stressed that the Organization’s entire assistance is based on the volunteer contributions by German citizens, not on the German Government’s money.