Part 11 (1/2)
SOCIAL BENEFITS
In addition to receiving free medical care, all citizens are ent.i.tled to a variety of social benefits, including sickness and disability pay, pensions, maternity benefits, and family allowances. Most of these are administered by the trade unions, but pensions are under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Finance. They are financed by the central government and by contributions from the employers based on a percentage of gross salaries and wages paid.
All workers are ent.i.tled to paid sick leave after three months' service.
In the case of accidents at work, there is no waiting period. Lump-sum compensation for temporary disablement because of an accident at work ranges in amount, depending on severity of injury and length of service. During the period of disablement, the worker is ent.i.tled to benefits ranging from 30 to 100 percent of his wage, depending on the severity of the disablement and on his income. Prolonged or permanent disability ent.i.tles the worker to a pension.
Old-age pensions are based on the years of service and kind of work performed. The pensionable age is fifty-five for women and sixty for men, but earlier retirement is possible for certain categories of work.
Pension payments range from 55 to 80 percent of wages based on a scale covering the last five years of employment or, in some cases, three out of the last five years. Higher rates are paid for work years past the usual retirement age. Pensions are payable to dependents after the death of the pensioner. Dependents also receive life insurance payments.
Cooperative farm members are ent.i.tled to pensions after twenty years of work for women and twenty-five years of work for men provided they worked 100 to 135 days each year. In 1972 it was suggested that 200 to 250 days of work per year should be required for pensions in exchange for higher pension payments to cooperative farm members.
Pensions are collectible even if a person continues working. This system was criticized by Zhivkov in late 1972. He suggested that persons who continued to work after being eligible for a pension should be encouraged to do so without drawing a pension but should, instead, acc.u.mulate additional increments to their pension for each year worked.
In addition to old-age pensions there are pensions for special merit payable to persons who have made an exceptional contribution to national life and national pensions payable to fighters against fascism and capitalism. All minimum pension payments were increased in 1972.
Under new provisions announced in March 1973, employed women will be ent.i.tled to four months of fully paid maternity leave and six months of leave at minimum wages for the first child; five and seven months, respectively, for the second child; six and eight months for the third child; and four and six months for each subsequent child. Mothers who are students or who do not work for some valid reason will receive minimum wages for corresponding periods. Mothers of children under the age of ten are ent.i.tled to special annual leave. All mothers receive a cash payment at the birth of a child; the payments are sharply differentiated to encourage larger families. In early 1973 the payments were 20 leva for the first child, 200 leva for the second child, and 500 leva for the third child. It was planned, however to raise these payments to 100 leva, 250 leva, and 500 leva, respectively.
Another inducement for larger families is a system of monthly family allowance payments for children up to the age of sixteen or until they complete secondary school. Allowances are payable to all families regardless of whether or not the parents work. A variety of other social a.s.sistance benefits are available to indigents, persons disabled from childhood, orphans, and the aged with no income.
WORK AND LEISURE
In 1973 the country was in the process of s.h.i.+fting from a forty-six-hour, six-day workweek to a 42.5-hour, five-day workweek. The transition was being carried out district by district according to a set schedule. It was to be completed by 1975. Persons working in agriculture, education, and the health service, however, were to continue to work their forty-six hour workweek, except where the actual work involved was adaptable to a reduced workweek.
The reduction in working hours had been a much debated subject for several years. It was first promised by the government in 1968, but its implementation has been slow because it is predicated on the same level of productivity and output by each enterprise as before implementation.
Pressure for reduced working hours has been strong because most Bulgarians have very little time for genuine leisure in their daily life.
The lack of time for genuine leisure is the result not only of long working hours but also of an inadequate trade and service network, a shortage of time-saving household equipment, and an excessive bureaucracy. All the daily ch.o.r.es, such as housekeeping, shopping, and attending to other personal or family matters, are time consuming and c.u.mbersome. Studies have shown that all persons over the age of six devote an average of four hours out of every twenty-four to housework alone. The national leaders.h.i.+p feels this is excessive and has proposed measures to develop the service sector.
The favorite leisure-time activity of young and old, urban and rural Bulgarians is to get together with friends for informal socializing. Men congregate at the neighborhood tavern or their favorite cafe to drink plum brandy or wine, play cards, and talk about the latest news. Women gather to gossip at each other's homes, at the village pump, or at the neighborhood playground or park. The evening promenade is an important diversion for all ages and social groups. Walking back and forth at some designated public thoroughfare in small groups of friends or relatives, people greet each other and exchange pleasantries.
Sports are a major form of recreation for young people. Soccer is the national sport, and the matches of major teams are followed with great interest. Hiking and picnic excursions are popular among city dwellers who like to get out into the country to enjoy the beauty and tranquillity of nature. In towns and cities, the theater, operas, concerts, and other cultural activities are popular leisure-time diversions. The cinema is extremely popular in both town and village, although increasing television viewing has been reducing cinema audiences.
In addition to sports, young people spend much of their leisure time listening to popular music and also dancing. In fact, they are periodically reprimanded by the BKP leaders.h.i.+p for spending too much of their time in leisure activities and not enough in socially useful work.
CHAPTER 6
EDUCATION
The educational system in Bulgaria, as in the Balkans generally, began to develop in a real sense only in the nineteenth century, princ.i.p.ally because Bulgaria had been under Turkish rule for 500 years. As education was of little concern to the Turks and an educated Bulgarian population would only represent a threat to their regime, the advancement of a formal educational system was either openly repressed or neglected by the Turks. As a result, the literacy rate in Bulgaria was one of the lowest in Europe at the time of liberation in 1878. During the six decades between liberation and World War II, the educational system had made great progress in providing basic education to young people, but there remained a hard core of illiterates in the adult population. After the Communists took over in 1944, a ma.s.sive drive in adult education virtually eliminated the problem of illiteracy within a decade.
The educational system under the Communists was essentially patterned on that of the Soviet Union, and the desire on the part of Bulgarian authorities to stay within that pattern brought about a general cautiousness as they restructured the system to make it coincide with the newly imposed ideology. Although educational reforms have been enacted with great frequency, they have often dealt with matters of form rather than of substance. The basic adherence to Soviet guidelines has remained intact throughout the years of communist rule.
As in most Eastern European countries, the major objectives of the Bulgarian educational system have been premised on both ideological issues and the demands of the national economy. One of the primary goals of the system--both stated and implicit--is the production of the ideal communist citizen who will work for the realization of ”socialist construction” and the betterment of the socialist society. A second major premise of the system is that the demands of the economy must be met; this goal is to be achieved by educating skilled personnel to fill the specific needs of its various sectors. Because of the trend toward industrialization that obtains in all communist countries, a corollary policy is that the study of science and technology must be emphasized over the study of the humanities.
According to established principles, therefore, certain policies are carried out in the process of education. People of worker or peasant origin, who the Communists perceive as having been deprived of their basic rights to an education in the past, are allowed to enter the higher levels of the educational system without the usual prerequisite examination if the necessary places are available. They generally represent between 30 and 40 percent of the total higher education population as compared with 80 percent of the population as a whole.
Certain communist principles form the backbone of the curriculum. Work is perceived to be an integral part of education as are directed extracurricular activities, and a sizable percentage of formal education is allotted for practical and vocational training. Religious education, which was a legacy from the past, has been dismissed as superst.i.tious and archaic, and virtually all religious schools have been banned. The curriculum from the earliest years of schooling to the upper levels of higher education is filled with such courses as Marxism-Leninism, the history of the communist party of the Soviet Union, and the history of the Bulgarian Communist Party (BKP--see Glossary).
Under the many and varied educational reforms legislated under the Communists, the pendulum has swung between relative emphasis on science and technology on the one hand and the humanities on the other. Although overall emphasis has always been on the sciences, that emphasis has increased and decreased at various times since the communist takeover.