Heating benefits didn’t reach the most needy

600 thousand households were unable to heat their homes last winter, according to the data published by the Hungarian Central Statistical Office. The number of excess winter deaths falls between 2000 and 4000 in Hungary, and it stayed unchanged in the past years. The Hungarian government provided a budget of 850 million HUF in 2011 and one billion HUF in 2012 for “handling the winter crisis”. In 2011 there were 450, in 2012 there were 1650 local governments that submitted applications with the aim of providing free firewood to their poorest citizens from this budget. However, 1200 local governments, those with the worst financial conditions, did not apply for funds. Atlatszo.hu’s data demonstrated that the majority of the government funding dedicated to the issue has not reached the most needy households.

Read the article in Hungarian here.