Portal de Murcia
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From: Antonio Benito Galindo and Clara Martínez Baeza, councilors of the PSOE and Podemos municipal groups respectively.To: Pilar Torres Díez, Councilor for Social and Family Rights.To the attention of Pilar Torres Díez.We want to share with you, once again, our concern and outrage with the way in which school canteen grants are being managed for students enrolled in the municipality of Murcia in centers supported with public funds, better known as “Scholarships-canteen” .
The decision to replace this aid with a rechargeable card-wallet seemed to us to be a wise decision at the time, even though it was taken well behind the day on which the Alarm State was decreed.
But this mechanism, which should facilitate the provision of aid, still does not work two months after classes were suspended, and aid, when it arrives, does it late and badly.None of the major municipalities in the Region, except Murcia, has left these minors behind: Cartagena, Lorca, Cieza, Molina de Segura ...
But it is that even more modest municipalities, whose financial capacity is low, are trying not to leave abandoned to their minors, arbitrating solutions to cover this need and this right.
Even the government of Spain has granted the Region of Murcia more than a million euros to finance these grants.
Extra money to urgently pay the aid that was already granted.
Where is all that money?When from our municipal groups we have requested information regarding the management of these grants, you have told us that everything is working normally and that the problems that existed regarding the difficulties in delivering the cards were solved.
It was not true.
On April 2, it was announced that the regional government was expanding the dining room scholarships during the alarm period: 87 euros per retail, which is just the only amount that you have paid to families today and that covers ONLY until last 8 of April.
The result is that the 3,000 boys and girls who are beneficiaries of a scholarship-dining room in the municipality of Murcia have not received anything for thirty-five days.
But it is even more serious:Hundreds of them have not even received this card since classes were suspended as a result of the State of Alarm Decree: hundreds of families from Murcia who have received NOTHING IN TWO MONTHS.
The cause of this problem can be diverse and we understand that, in part, they may be due to the inconveniences that management itself in the midst of the pandemic has implicitly entailed.
If after two months you still do not have the updated base we do not know what you are waiting for; But if you already have it and the cards still do not reach their recipients, it would be to burst into tears.If after two months you still do not have the updated base we do not know what you are waiting for; But if you already have it and the cards still do not reach their recipients, it would be to burst into tears.If after two months you still do not have the updated base we do not know what you are waiting for; But if you already have it and the cards still do not reach their recipients, it would be to burst into tears.In summary: the city of Murcia, the seventh city in Spain, has limited itself to transferring the little money that was given to it and has taken care of its scholarship recipients as it should have been.
You have not done anything extra for them or with the money that the government of Spain has given you.
I don't think anyone can describe this as brilliant management.Even so, in this time our political groups have worked, collaborated and contributed to make the situation more bearable for everyone.
We have allowed you to work and we have lent our shoulders, maintaining a critical but constructive attitude and limited to the scope of the work committees.
We understood what people expected of us and we have done it from the heart, but it cannot be done at the expense of the rights of the weakest.
This situation is unbearable and we do not tolerate it for another minute.
We cannot allow anyone to turn their backs, let alone children who are not to blame for the situation in their homes or, of course, for this health crisis.
Eating cannot be a luxury, it is a basic human right that does not understand either competencies or bureaucratic procedures.Faced with this serious situation, we demand that the government team of the Murcia City Council implement the following measures:-To proceed urgently to distribute the cards that have not yet reached their families, if necessary requesting help from the staff of other councils.-To urgently set a stable payment schedule for the dining room scholarships for the nearly one thousand minors dependent on the social services of this city council at least once a week.-To urgently establish a stable payment schedule for the dining room scholarships for the more than two thousand minors who receive aid of this type from the regional government.- That the dates for the distribution of cards and the subsequent recharges, as well as the dates and amounts of the payments made by the regional government in this regard, be made public.- That the urgent payment of the amounts owed by the regional government to this and other municipalities of the Region of Murcia, especially those from the special fund from the government of Spain, be officially demanded, and that a stable framework of payments be established.Pilar, this is a priority.
Boys and girls in Murcia urgently need a solution. Clara Martínez Baeza.
Antonio Benito Galindo.
Source: PSOE Murcia / Podemos
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