Milanka Opacic of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) asked during Question Time in parliament whether the Health and Social Welfare Ministry was intending to ensure supervision in such institutions, claiming that lack of professional supervision helped the covering up of the child abuse case in Brezovica.
Opacic said that the current laws, which foresee only administrative supervision in homes, were not sufficient to prevent cases such as the one in Brezovica.
A state secretary in the Health and Social Welfare Ministry, Dorica Nikolic, admitted that inspection, namely expert supervision in homes was not sufficient and that until this year the ministry did not have an inspection unit which was established only now and that it was short in staff.
It is not in the jurisdiction of the Ministry to interview children so as to collect certain information. This is the job of the State Prosecutor's Office, Nikolic said.
As long as this is the case, we cannot do anything, she said and agreed that inspection in homes must be intensified.