More than a quarter of Turkish children living in poverty, says UNICEF

from NTV MSNBC

Reforms to the social security and health systems are important to counter child poverty, Pieters said.

ANKARA - More than a quarter of all Turkish children under the age of 15 live in poverty, according to a senior official of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Lila Pieters, the deputy representative of UNICEF in Turkey, said that 27.7 percent of Turkish children are living in poverty, with the country making little investment in children.

Speaking in an interview with the Anatolian News Agency, Pieters said that Turkey had one of the highest levels of children in its population, with 28.4 percent of the population under the age of 14.

While there had been progress in improving the health system, much still needed to be done to improve education, she said.
“There cannot be economic growth unless there is an educated population,” Pieters said.

Pieters said Turkey should start investing in children at an early age if it wants to raise the number of children attending the elementary schools and eliminate the disparity in number of girls and boys in these schools.

“It is very dramatic to see that girls are quitting school after 11, and this is the biggest violation of human rights for women,” she said.

It is a country’s wealth to have traditions and culture, but Turkey should work on programs in which women and men jointly participate, she said.

Kamu-Sen: Poverty Threshold rises to 1,107 YTL, hunger threshold rises to 848 YTL

from The New Anatolian

According to Turkey Public Employers’ Trade Unions Confederation (Türkiye Kamu-Sen), poverty threshold rose to 1,107 YTL and hunger threshold rose to 848 YTL.

The written statement of Türkiye Kamu-Sen announced the results of the January Minimum Living Index that they have set through the research due to the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUİK) January 2007 prices. The index says that the poverty threshold for an employee rose to 1,107.30 YTL. The minimum living threshold of a family of four is established to be 2,225.13 YTL.

The index gives out the fact that the minimum living threshold for a family of four came out to be 5.63 percent higher than the previous month and that the hunger threshold for a working individual rose by 5.03 percent and stood at 848.85 YTL.

Due to the research conducted, the sum of the average food and accommodation expenditures of a family of four is estimated to be 842.25 YTL in January.

The research also said that due to the January 2007 data, the required expenditure to have the healthy diet which is established by medical institutions is 16.26 YTL per day. The total food expenditure of the family stood at 487.86 YTL per month.

Half of the civil servant salary goes to food
The research said: “As at January 2007, the expenditure of a civil servant for family diet is 51.57 percent of his salary, which is 945.93 YTL on average. The accommodation expenditure taking place in TUİK data stands at the 37.46 percent of the average salary.

A civil servant is obliged to spend 89.03 percent of his average salary just on food and accommodation expenditures and left with just the 10.97 percent for the other needs. A civil servant family living on an average salary has only 103.77 YTL out of the January 2007 salary for the other necessaries such as transportation, health, education, communication and clothing.”