Norway’s Socialist Left Party wants to give 1,000 kroner more to the unemployed before Christmas

Audun LysbakkenPhoto: Håkon Mosvold Larsen / NTB

As more people than usual will be receiving unemployment benefits or social assistance in Norway this Christmas, the Socialist Left Party (SV) wants an extra financial contribution to the unemployed and their families.

The proposal means that adults who receive unemployment benefits or social assistance would receive NOK 1,000 more before Christmas – and they would receive the same amount for each child, according to newspaper VG.

“Tens of thousands of children now have a mother or father who will spend Christmas laid off or unemployed. That means that their parents will worry about the future,” SV leader Audun Lysbakken told the newspaper.

SV is promoting the proposal in the Norwegian parliament (Storting) on Monday. It wants the Storting to address it urgently on the same day.

Price tag? NOK 280 million

The party has calculated that the measure, distributed among 109,000 recipients of unemployment benefits and 70,000 recipients of social assistance, as well as their children, would cost NOK 280 million.

Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Henrik Asheim (H) believes it is now more important to secure people’s jobs.

“It makes much more sense to continue to deliver measures that contribute to existing jobs surviving the crisis, and that new jobs can be created,” he wrote in an email to the newspaper.

© NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today

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