SERBIA: 100,000 Elderly Serbs Without an Income

. BELGRADE (BalkanInsight), September 8, 2008: Some 100,000 elderly people in Serbia live without any form of income, a daily reports. Belgrade’s Vecernje Novosti daily says that the majority of them do not have any relatives to take care of them. They live in deserted villages on food they manage to grow themselves. As well as no state pensions, many do not have any health insurance either, according to Amiti, a local association dealing with problems faced by the elderly. A survey by the group will list all the names of those people above 65 years of age “with no income, relatives or property,” and will be submitted to Serbia’s Labour and Social Care Ministry. The aim is to force the state to secure at least minimum resources for them to “buy bread and medicine,” the daily says. Amiti say tax payers should bear the cost, adding it was the only way Serbia can ease the poverty facing the country’s elderly citizens. Copyrights © 2007 Balkan Investigative Reporting Network.