Ukrainian Parliament satisfied the petition of churches to accelerate clearance of humanitarian aid

The Parliament passed in the first reading Bill No. 2532 on efficiency of decision-making when recognizing shipments as humanitarian aid.

250 MPs of Ukraine voted in favor of this government initiative on April 9, 2015. In all parliamentary factions the majority supported the proposed changes, except the Opposition bloc, which gave no single vote for the bill, as reported by Institute of religious freedom.

Bill №2532 introduces amendments to the Law “On humanitarian aid” to facilitate decision-making in the field of recognition of humanitarian aid to meet the needs of specific population areas.

The amendments also correspond to the idea of ​​reforming local government and territorial organization of power in Ukraine, said portal parliament.

In particular, the following changes are suggested:

1. A part of the functions and powers shall be transferred to the Council of Ministers of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Kyiv and Sevastopol city state administrations as listed below:

recognition of passenger cars for disabled people as humanitarian aid;

recognition of cargo weighing up to 3 tons as humanitarian aid;

control over the receipt, storage and preservation of humanitarian aid;

2. The following types of control shall be brought in line with the terminology of the provisions of Article 319 of the Customs Code of Ukraine that regulate the goods (items) of Humanitarian Aid: “sanitary-epidemiological” instead of “sanitary”, “veterinary and sanitary” instead of “veterinary”;

3. The priority and gratuitous sanitary, veterinary, phytosanitary, environmental and radiological control shall be deemed as mandatory under law.

4. The rule restricting the volume of received humanitarian aid etc. shall be abolished.

The proposed changes will take effect if the Parliament upholds them in the second reading.

As reported by the IRS, representatives of churches complained that during 2013 and 2014 the provision of humanitarian assistance was actually obstructed due to bureaucracy of the relevant services.

Previous government has tightened the procedure for clearance of freight, by virtue of which many of them were lost, and the receipt of new goods was under threat. The problems with assisting immigrants from occupied Crimea and Donbas also emerged.