A Social Services office, in a file image. /
Some 23,000 neighbors are potential beneficiaries of this state aid
The Murcia City Council has just launched the first office to help the residents of the municipality to process state aid for the Minimum Vital Income (IMV), which can benefit some 23,000 citizens. The office has an official and will have the support of the rest of the Social Services departments.
The objective of this service is to help potential beneficiaries to present all the documentation to the Ministry, a process that is completely digital and that leaves many out because they do not have access to digital media or do not know how to do it.
This office was one of the demands of Podemos when it came to supporting the municipal Budgets of the new Government coalition in the Consistory. Its spokesperson, Ginés Ruiz, stressed that this state aid “is highly demanded by groups that are in a precarious situation, but its processing is not easy and we must help them and avoid this digital divide.”
Ruiz congratulated himself that, “although it is not a municipal competence”, the City Council “has not looked the other way”. It is necessary to avoid, he concluded, that those who need this help “are left out because they do not know how to process it.”
The director of the Social Services Area of the City Council, Andrés Duarte, explained that the implementation of the office will be progressive and that the first cases are already being worked on. There will be an email and a specific telephone number for prior appointment and all the Social Services offices of the municipality will be informed of how they can help in the management of these aids. The cases will arrive at the office with the documentation already prepared for presentation, “and the person will be accompanied in all the procedures.”
Duarte insisted that the main problem of this group was access to digital media, since a high percentage does not have skills in the use of the Internet, and that the documentation is complex.
The director of Social Services calculated that the estimate they make of the potential beneficiaries of this aid in the municipality is based on data from the INE on the volume of the population in social exclusion. In Murcia, and out of a population of 460,000 inhabitants, we would be talking about 5%, that is, about 23,000.
For both the mayor of Murcia, José Antonio Serrano, and the deputy mayor, Mario Gómez, present at the inauguration of the office, this act demonstrated that there is another way of governing in coalition, “when the political parties respect each other and put aside the partisan interests in favor of those of Murcia» and agreements were reached with other formations, as in this case with Podemos.