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NEWS
Reformation Plan for Religious Services Within 6 Months
By Eliezer Rauchberger
Within 4-6 months the government will submit a reformation
plan for religious services Atty. Shimon Ulman, legal advisor
to the Chief Rabbinate, told the Knesset State Comptroller's
Committee during a meeting on the state of religious services
in Israel.
The committee convened following numerous complaints by
citizens regarding problems with religious services, such as
unpaid salaries at local religious councils, the freezing of
regulations, and legal problems preventing funding
transfers.
Minister Yitzchak Cohen, who is in charge of religious
services under the Prime Minister's Office, said there is no
chance of carrying out a recovery program at the religious
councils and improving religious services without a
structural change in the budget, which requires local
authorities to provide 60 percent of religious council
funding. Cohen says prior to the time he took the post there
was an eight-month lag in salary payments for various
religious council workers, but today that gap has been closed
significantly though not erased.
Committee Chairman MK Orlev (HaIchud HaLeumi-NRP) said the
system of funding the religious councils must be changed to
the system used to fund other social services, with the
government providing 75 percent of funding and the local
councils providing 25 percent.
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