The South Caucasus country of Georgia has taken the concept of a welfare state to a whole new level by extending government aid to a millionaire. A nationwide inspection of government aid recipients revealed that quite a few of the country’s rich were somehow included in the poverty list and were happily getting some of their tax money back through a subsistence allowance.
The Ministry of Health and Labor's Social Services Agency, responsible for verifying welfare recipients' eligibility, recently reviewed its list of beneficiaries and found that 1,402 people on the list had incomes well above the levels required for government aid. “One businessman’s annual income was over a million lari [$625,000],” agency head Noe Kinkladze told reporters.
There were others, he said, with lower annual incomes, but still close to a million lari.
The agency did not specify how these well-to-do citizens ended up on the list, nor identify them by name.
Rich and successful as these people were, looks like they could still use a little extra cash from the government; perhaps to tip drivers or cleaning ladies. Georgia pays individual welfare recipients between 70 to 150 laris ($42.31-$90.66) per month.
The “poor millionaire” and other affluent beneficiaries were revealed after the agency cross-checked its lists with data from the National Revenue Service, the Georgian equivalent of the IRS. Kinkladze said that the government in 2012 -- under the control of President Mikheil Saakashvili's United National Movement for most of the year -- gave under 1.2 million laris ($730,000) to sustain the rich.
In general, government social workers visit households to inspect the validity of claims for state assistance and assign scores based on criteria such as family incomes, social vulnerability, and even home appliances. In the past, households have been denied aid for having a TV set or a refrigerator.
Maybe this time, the agents did not notice the swimming pools out back.
Giorgi Lomsadze is a journalist based in Tbilisi, and author of Tamada Tales.
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