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| Photo: Depositphotos.com |
Town councillors will vote on Thursday on whether to
give 20 people currently living on welfare payments a monthly income of €933
with no strings attached.
Several other towns and cities, including Wageningen,
Utrecht, Tilburg, Nijmegen and Groningen are also keen to experiment with basic
incomes.
Last year, the government agreed to give more leeway for experiments
with different forms of income and welfare benefits. For example, in some
places, welfare claimants will not have to apply for jobs but will be allowed
to keep more of any addition earnings.
Terneuzen, which has a population of
25,000 and 1,136 people on welfare benefits, plans to select its basic income
recipients from a pool of people who have been claiming bijstand for more than
three years.
‘These are people who can’t be motivated and have given up looking
for a job,’ alderman Cees Liefting told the paper. ‘We have a moral duty to try
to find new tools to stimulate people in a hopeless situation, hence the
experiment.’
Supporters of the basic income concept say it will allow everyone
to decide whether to work, study, start a company or, for example, take care of
elderly family members.
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