ZAGREB, 12 April, 2021 - Prime Minister Andrej Plenković said on Monday that an agreement has been reached with pensioners' representatives regarding COVID relief that will be paid to about 850,000 seniors in the end of April or early May.

The COVID supplements will be tax-free and not subject to enforcement collection.

"In this budget situation, we have done the most we could and hope that this one-off payment will nevertheless help our pensioners to ease their situation to some extent," said Plenković after a meeting with pensioners' associations.

The one-off supplement will be paid to relieve the consequences caused by the COVID-19 epidemic. The grant will be paid according to several categories, he explained.

The highest amount will be paid to recipients of the lowest pension allowance. Seniors receiving a pension allowance of up to HRK 1,500  will receive a one-off grant of HRK 1,200.

Pensioners with an allowance of between HRK 1,500 and HRK 2,000 will receive HRK 900 and those with a pension of HRK 2,000 to HRK 3,000 will receive HRK 600, while pensioners with an allowance of HRK 3,000 to HRK 4,000 will receive HRK 400.

Plenković underscored that supplement will be tax free, it cannot be included in any enforcement notices nor be added to any assets test that may affect free health insurance supplements.

An estimated that about 850,000 pensioners will receive the one-off payment, which will require about HRK 600 million from the state budget.

(€1 = HRK 7.569094)

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ZAGREB, November 8, 2020 - Red Cross Croatia (HCK) has launched the "Let's take care of them" campaign to provide 23,000 low-income elderly people with protective masks and disinfectants.

The HCK hopes that this action will provide additional protection against coronavirus for senior citizens.

HCK's national logistical centre has begun distributing personal protective equipment to its regional centres, and during November and December the supplies will be delivered to beneficiaries above the age of 65 who are registered with HCK.

The association will contact its beneficiaries and inform them of where they can obtain packages with protective equipment, HCK said in a press release on Friday.

HCK executive director Robert Markt underlined that the current situation, marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, was difficult for everyone and particularly for the elderly.

"We have been assisting for months now. We are visiting them at home aware that we all have to take care of them and enable them to have good protection," he said.

ZAGREB, Oct 1, 2020  - Officials of Zagreb's city administration on Thursday presented the 2020-2024 Strategy for Improving the Quality of Life for Older Persons.

The 30-measure strategy, which was presented on the occasion of the International Day of Older Persons, observed on 1 October,  will be implemented in six fields: social protection, healthcare, lifelong learning, various aspects of free time, human rights, and civil society, said Romana Galic, the head of the city department for social protection and persons with disabilities.

Galic said that the implementation of the strategy would create preconditions for adding Zagreb to the World Health Organisation's Global Network for Age-friendly Cities and Communities. 

Every tenth resident in Zagreb aged above 85, 1 in 5 residents older than 65

Zagreb boasts that the life expectancy of its residents has risen, which is evident in the data that one in ten citizens is in the age cohort above 85.

In 2019, as many as 220 people living in this city were older than 100.

Also, a share of the elderly in the total population of the city has risen. For instance in 2014, 14% of the city's residents were in the age cohort above 65, and this share rose to 17% in 2011, while in 2018,  1 in every 5 residents were older than 65.

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As Bernard Ivezic/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 14th of April, 2019, Croatia's Nocturiglow is currently the biggest startup ''surprise'' in the Republic of Croatia. The story of this startup, which won best pitch at the first Investors Conference @ Algebra Lab, has accelerated beyond all possible expectations.

The Nocturiglow team has developed a low-tech care product for the elderly and infirm which has the same name as the company itself, for those who struggle to get up to go to the bathroom to urinate, or for those who simply cannot for whatever reason. The only, conditionally speaking that is, "technological" thing that Nocturiglow's ''bowl'' possesses is that it has fluorescent elements which make it glow in the dark, which is why it's easy to locate and use during the night. There is a female and a male version.

Nocturiglow's Ivan Babić politely declined to show an image of the design of Nocturiglow's new product, because he is currently in the process of having this intellectual property protected for sale on the EU market.

"We're completely low tech. That was our whole goal, because our competition doesn't focus on quality and user experience, and that's why we think we have room for success," Babić says. He added that Nocturiglow will develop other care products aimed at the older generation in the future, and they will also incorporate sensors, which of course means adding more technology.

Like most millenials today, unsatisfied with the potential income and opportunities that he could accomplish with a master's degree in logistics and management here in Croatia, he was looking for a stroke of luck which would take him down a different path, and so he left Croatia. For three years, he worked as a carer for people with disabilities over in Germany, a job which helped him arrive to this idea in the first place.

"When the STEP-RI startup incubator issued a tender, I applied, I resigned from my job in Germany and came back to Croatia to develop my own business," Babić says. In the past six months, he has made a prototype on his computer with his partner Sara Gunjača and his designer, Ivo Blažinčić.

Now he is preparing to create the very first functional prototype. His plan is to make fifty copies to be shared by test users. Previously, this type of thing was tested through surveys among employees of private and public healthcare institutions.

"We have also noticed that our product is not only good for patients but also for healthcare institutions, because it facilitates jobs for caregivers, as well as insurance companies," added Babić.

He noted that he wants to start selling Nocturiglow's brand new product through his own web store by the beginning of 2020, while the ''attacking'' the EU market through Amazon. He also wants to develop sales to various  healthcare institutions. He has even been in talks with an American company, a partner of Kickstarter, about production. Currently, however, investors haven't come knocking at his door, yet.

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Click here for the original article by Bernard Ivezic for Poslovni Dnevnik