Prime Minister Edi Rama Prime Minister Edi Rama started the first day of 2019 visiting the babies born after midnight on New Year’s Eve at the Gynaecological Obstetric Hospital “Koço Gliozheni” in Tirana to hand over to the mothers the baby bonus cheques, according to a law that entered into force on 1 January 2019.
The government head welcomed Aleks, the first newborn of 2019 in Gynaecological Obstetric Hospital “Koço Gliozheni”, and the third child as the brother of two older sisters in his family and brings a reward of 120,000 Albanian lek to the family.
“This is the cheque. Aleks is the third child and he is rewarded a 120 000 lek cash gift,” PM Rama said while visiting the parents of the lucky baby.
The second newborn in this hospital was a girl, also the second child in her family, who will benefit an 80 000 lek in baby bonus and the third was again a girl who will be rewarded an amount of 40 000 lek in cash gift as the first child in her family.
The Minister of Health and Social Protection Ogerta Manastirliu explained that every new mother is handed over the baby bonus upon electronic registration at the hospital.
“Civil registry employees have been deployed to the 37 maternity hospitals across the country and the whole procedure and the act of giving birth is carried out online. The maternity hospitals have also employed a specialist to fill the cheque according to a certain format in order to ease the delivery of the baby bonus,” Manastirliu said.
“By developing such a system, we have avoided all previous bureaucratic procedures to provide the baby bonus,” the Premier said.
A total of 15 million euros is projected in the 2019 budget in support of the baby bonus policy.
“There will be no more bureaucracy procedures as the funding is directly allocated to the Ministry of Health and Social Protection for the social inclusion programme being implemented by the State Social Service. A bank account is opened at a commercial bank and every parent can now easily withdraw the baby bonus,” Manastirliu explained.
