SENIORS APPEAL TO PUTIN TO TEST GRANTS

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MOSCOW, July 1 (RIA Novosti) - The Russian Pensioners' Union had an enlarged-attention Central Board session today to make an appeal to President Vladimir Putin. The Union circulated the text tonight.

An upcoming reform, which envisages monetary compensations replacing privileges in kind, demands thorough testing in pilot projects to be launched in particular parts of the country, community activists say in the appeal. The projects are to concern the better-off donor regions and the poorer areas, entitled to allocations, alike. The appeal also proposes an alternative pattern, with the replacement going gradually.

President Putin ought to keep the reform in check lest regional administrations cut prospective grants to line their own pockets.

As Mikhail Zurabov, Minister of Health and Social Development, addressed the session, he explained the reform in ample detail and convinced the gathering that seniors would not be any worse-off with welfare grants instead of privileges, and with related expenditures re-distributed between the federal center and the regions.

The activists are, however, alarmed-they doubt regional administrations will cope with the duty. The doubt is the greatest for the pooper parts of the country, which will hardly afford compensations comparable to present-day privileges, which are to go.

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