The electronic platform intended for beneficiaries and providers of domestic services, recently launched by ANOFM and about which “Viata liberă” wrote, introduces a new concept on the labor market: payment with tickets purchased on the tichete.anofm.ro platform, which will be exchanged later in money. How much good this platform will bring and how much it will contribute to the elimination of black labor remains to be seen.
What can be said, first of all, about the ANOFM initiative is that it has good intentions, but that is not a guarantee. And hell is paved with such intentions, they say. The vouchers with which people who carry out occasional activities in the household can be remunerated are carriers of social and health insurance benefits, so they benefit from settled medical services, their contributions being capitalized in the pension as well. But the condition for domestic workers to benefit from pension and health insurance is the exchange of at least 85 vouchers for domestic activities, respectively 1,275 lei/month. Of the 15 lei value of a ticket, 3 lei represent the contributions necessary for the provider to benefit from pension and health insurance, without the need for an employment contract between the parties.
Then there is the matter of actually collecting the money. The vouchers are papers that do not have Isărescu’s signature on them, not actual money. They can be exchanged for money later, and we all know what it’s like to get money from the government. Moreover, the tickets are not transferable either, with name, surname and personal code, so you, as a service provider – plumber, “woman in the house”, laundress, carpet cleaner, pet sitter or anything else you -you would occupy – you cannot pay with the voucher further for another service. You have to wait to exchange it for real money.
Also theoretically, the ANOFM platform “mediates” demand and supply. Beneficiaries post the services for which they are looking for personnel, and the providers, the services they can offer. Even this interaction does not guarantee success, and a proof of this is the job fairs of recent years in Galați, where a thousand people come and a maximum of three or four are employed, this in happy cases. At these scholarships, demand and supply are put face to face in vain, when the employers’ offer is weak or poorly paid, and the candidates scrunch their noses and leave slamming the door.
As usual, practice can be what “kills” us. What do you do when a pipe bursts in your house on Friday night or on the weekend? Do you register on the ANOFM platform and wait for the offers or do you call the craftsman you know or someone recommends? And what do you do if you say you don’t give more than 100 lei, and the craftsman asks you for 200 or more? Or what do you do if on the platform your request is accepted by a 16-18-year-old you have never heard of in your life, while the craftsman you trust asks you for more? Who do you go to if you want to solve your problem quickly and well?
And I think there is another problem. The system planned by ANOFM, as a milestone of the PNRR, will probably trigger the “allergy” of many Romanians to the declaration of income, especially those made after or during working hours at other employers.
