SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, 4 Apr. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The Cabildo de Tenerife will distribute one million euros among the 31 municipalities of the island to promote leisure and free time activities aimed at people over 65 years of age with the aim of alleviating social isolation.
This same week the bases of the subsidies will be published on the bulletin board of the insular corporation and in the Official Gazette of Santa Cruz de Tenerife (BOP), thus opening a period of 15 working days for the municipalities to present their applications. .
The Minister of Social Action, Marián Franquet, points out in a note that the objective of this line of aid is “to directly provide resources to all the island’s municipalities to respond to the needs of the elderly in situations of isolation that many of them live, in addition to mitigating the negative consequences that the pandemic has had on their physical, mental and emotional state.
Now that the sanitary restrictions have been eliminated, he indicates, “it is time for us to launch this important action, which is based on the previous study that we commissioned in the Cabildo on this group and that is part of a comprehensive action strategy much broader, focused on the elderly, their rights and their different requirements to face their aging process with quality of life”.
The counselor also refers to the work started this year to resume the ‘Social Tourism’ program for the elderly, also in coordination with the municipalities.
Franquet recalls that this line of aid is added to other initiatives launched by the Cabildo during the pandemic, among which is the ‘Tenerite Cuida’ program, promoted together with the Red Cross to combat the digital divide among older people in the island and improve its connectivity with the outside world or the support and care service for the elderly who live in isolated rural areas.
MOST VULNERABLE GROUPS
The Minister of Social Action explains that, “in addition to meeting demographic criteria, the bases contemplate other objective criteria for the distribution of social aid with which it is sought to meet the special needs of the most vulnerable people.”
In this sense, the CEO of Citizen Participation and Diversity; Nauzet Gugliotta points out that, for the first time, 15% of the budget, about 150,000 euros, has been reserved to promote actions with older people who have some type of disability.
In addition, another 10% is used to finance specific projects for women aged 65 or over.
DEMOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION
Gugliotta explains that, with the aim of benefiting all municipalities, it has been agreed to distribute 10% of the total amount of the budget among all municipalities, in equal parts.
At the same time, another 100,000 euros will be distributed among the 17 municipalities with less than 20,000 inhabitants and the same amount will be reserved to serve the scattered population.
The other 650,000 euros of this line of subsidies for the elderly will be distributed taking into account the distribution by municipalities of the elderly population, so that 20% will go to people over 80 years of age and 25% will go to people between 75 and 69 years.
The CEO points out that both for the design of this line and for the distribution criteria established in the bases, the diagnosis commissioned by the Cabildo from the University of La Laguna has been taken into account to find out some issues related to the population over 65 years on the island, amounting to 148,632 people, with a gender distribution of 83,716 women, 56%, and 65,456 men, 44%, and a very unequal distribution by municipality.
