He sees the panorama as “bleak” and asks the administrations for more personnel and an economic model that does not generate “poor workers”
LA LAGUNA (TENERIFE), June 16. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Cáritas Diocesana de Tenerife has warned this Thursday of the worsening of poverty in the Canary Islands and has warned that the future is going to be “complicated” due to the effects of the war in Ukraine, the rise in prices and the next famine in Africa.
This was stated at the press conference to present the report corresponding to 2021 by the Bishop of Tenerife, Bernardo Álvarez, who commented that the entity is increasingly “necessary” given the increase in citizen demands.
Last year, the entity served a total of 19,832 people and 5,349 households, including 4,105 minors, which is 23% more than in 2019 –before the pandemic– and 1% more than in 2020, and with many first-time visitors.
Given this situation, Álvarez has called on public administrations to hire more staff in social services to deal with the “immediacy” of the problems given that in some municipalities the waiting list reaches three months.
Likewise, he has requested changes in the regulation of migrant minors given that when they turn 18 they leave the tutelage of the administrations and leave them “on the street” and without documentation, “exposed to anything”.
The director of Cáritas, Juan Rognoni, has commented that they have gotten used to going “from scare to scare” after the real estate crisis of 2008, the health pandemic and the eruption of La Palma and appeals to be “prepared” to be able to intervene in cases of emergency and social exclusion, in such a way that it has urged the administrations not to reduce economic resources.
The secretary, Ricardo Iglesias, has said that “something is coming” for which the Caritas are coordinating nationally and internationally to respond to the problems that are going to arise in the international arena.
In the parishes alone, Caritas served 12,813 people last year, while 7,019 benefited from other projects, including 1,558 people in employment plans.
As for the Housing area, 4,694 people were attended to, of which 242 were welcomed in the entity’s seven resources for homeless cases in Tenerife, among which are 39 single-mother families.
In addition, the Mobile Street Care Units (UMAC) served 1,322 people, 75% more than in 2019.
Iglesias has recounted the “shameful and undignified reality” of homeless people because they live in “ravines, beaches, shacks and substandard housing”, while highlighting the work of the ‘Base 25’ program for people at risk of losing housing, which attended 784 households and 2,572 people.
He has indicated that access to housing is a “violated right” in Spain and that “without housing it is impossible to move towards integration”.
Regarding the profile of people served, 65% were women, and almost 60% of the total, people between 40 and 60 years old.
MORE THAN 7 MILLION BUDGET
Caritas had income last year amounting to 7.1 million, of which 2.8 million came from private donations via individuals, foundations, companies and parish collections and the rest, 4.2 million, from public resources.
Álvarez has specified that the philosophy of Caritas is “give what you receive” and therefore rules out resorting to debt formulas. “It is our guideline, we are not going to ask for loans from banks, it would be to fall into a kind of suicide,” he stressed.
The entity currently has 899 volunteers and more than 140 contracted people and the challenge, explained the secretary, is “to be more” to be able to attend to what is happening around the community given that times of “crisis and famine” are approaching.
Along these lines, he has not hidden that the panorama is “bleak” so it is “urgent” to deepen measures to get the Canary Islands out of such a “serious situation” and an economic model that is generating “poor workers”.
