Tuka: Business Loans Help Veterans More Than Handouts

Deputy Minister for the Temporarily Occupied Territories and IDPs and ex-Governor of Luhansk Oblast Civil-Military Administration George Tuka thinks it would make sense to offer combatants who fight in the ATO zone preferential loans for business instead of social benefits and pensions after they demobilize.

Tuka quoted Ivan Šimonović, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, after their meeting on May 29, 2016. According to him, Šimonović thinks that Croatia made a mistake when it gave its veterans benefits and pensions, as it excluded them from community life and brought about negative consequences in the form of alcohol abuse, violence and other social problems.

Tuka said that the other solution that Šimonović proposed, namely providing preferential loans to veterans so that they could start their own business, sounded very appealing to him. He also mentioned that he was against granting land plots to former combatants as most of them don’t have the funds to develop them anyway so it only makes them easy prey for construction companies looking to lay their hands on land in valuable districts.

Source: Ukrayinska Pravda