The opposition Jobbik party says it will submit to parliament a package of bills aimed at helping Hungarian employees and businesses in sectors hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.
Jobbik’s bills include setting up a job protection fund for introducing an 80 percent wage subsidy and a 9-month unemployment benefit. It includes schemes aimed at allowing people over the age of 60 who have lost their job because of the pandemic to retire, and giving 5 days of extra annual holiday to parents with children under 14.
The party proposes that health-care institutions receive voluntary contributions from corporate tax and that people in the education sector receive 100 percent of their pay if they have to go on sick leave because of the virus.
“The government’s crisis management strategy has failed,” Jobbik said in a statement, arguing that it had left tens of thousands of businesses and hundreds of thousands of people who have lost their jobs without support.
“While Hungary’s health-care and education systems are on the brink of collapse, cronies of [Prime Minister Viktor] Orbán are winning billions in state money and on public procurement projects and take secret trips almost on a daily basis to Switzerland, the Maldives or to Dubai,” it said.
In the featured photo: Jobbik president Péter Jakab. Photo by Szilárd Koszticsák/MTI
