It is not that the aid convened by the Badajoz City Council for small businessmen whose businesses have been affected by the health and economic crisis were the panacea. The mayor himself, Francisco Javier Fragoso, recognized it when he presented them. They are what they are: aid, planned to try to alleviate the difficulties suffered by the self-employed in this city, to the extent that a city council can do so with its own funds. But, once again, he has missed the mark.
It happened with the fund designed by the Municipal Institute of Social Services (IMSS) for families affected by the covid and it has happened again with those aimed at the self-employed, mutualists and small entrepreneurs. The government team can do the readings it wants. But that in a call for aid planned to cover family expenses, such as electricity consumption, rent, mortgage or medicines, endowed with more than one million euros, only 200,000 reach the beneficiaries (20%), when it had been estimated that possibly the amount would fall short due to the needs detected, is not exactly a success. And if in the next call, this time aimed at entrepreneurs who have seen their activity diminished, of the 3 million that are expected only a little more than half will reach their recipients, of course it is not an achievement and who has designed this plan can not feel at all satisfied with the result. Something has failed again and, at least, the person in charge must recognize that he has not achieved the objectives that he set and that it could not be other than the fund being exhausted, since the need existed, exists and will exist. The problem is that the surplus, both for family and business aid, cannot be recovered for these same purposes.
The fund to help families was opened in June. On November 15, the deadline to request it ended and only 191 petitions were presented. Of the surplus, the city council has allocated 200,000 euros to the so-called minimum vital supplies, which is a line of the Board that does run out. The 60% that has not been used, although it is not lost, cannot be reinvested in a similar call, in which the requirements that have been able to stop potential claimants from submitting their applications are met. The councilor for Social Services says that the reason may be that these aid were open to non-habitual applicants of Social Services, who possibly have not considered that they had the right to receive them. If so, the reporting mechanism has failed.
As something has had to fail in the call for the self-employed, if of the 3 million available, the municipal government team already calculates that 1.4 remain in the bag and will not reach their recipients. The city council rules out opening a new call, as it understands that if the interested parties have not requested them in a month and a half (the deadline ended on November 30), they will no longer do so. There have been associations of freelancers and entrepreneurs who have complained about the complexity of the process, which has led to potential beneficiaries who have backed down and have not even filled out the application. A complaint that they also do not share in the building in the Plaza de España, where they argue that with public money you have to be very demanding to ensure that it reaches those who really need it. So were they wrong in the initial calculations of both calls? Because the forecast was that both one fund and another would fall short. It is not credible that everyone who is entitled to these grants has applied for them. There is no one who believes that families and entrepreneurs with difficulties will not do the impossible to scratch at the bottom of any well. It’s not that the city council didn’t aim well, maybe the mechanism of the weapon was too convoluted.
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