A bureaucratic obstacle prevents two from receiving aid Ukrainian girls 12 and 14 years old residents in the south of Tenerife.
Both live with their grandmother, Laryza, 65, who was naturalized as Spanish 23 years ago and who currently resides in the town of San Isidro.
Because of the invasion of his country, he has taken care of two granddaughters, despite the fact that his economic situation is very precarious. He barely has a disability pension of 600 euros, of which almost half goes to pay the mortgage and the rest to support the family.
One of her granddaughters arrived in Spain in the middle of the covid-19 pandemic because she had a health problem and the second has been in Tenerife since last March to shelter from war that is being fought in your country.
In principle there were no problems for the minors to be accepted by a school and an institute and they were granted the refugee card.
But for months they have been faced with the impossibility of the girls being able to open their own bank account, a requirement that is continuously imposed on them to receive any type of aid.
The difficulty arises when they demand the signature of the father or the mother because the power of attorney granted by the mother to the grandmother from the Ukraine and translated into Spanish by the person who took care of the granddaughters is useless.
The father, who is a doctor, has had to leave the Ukraine, and the mother survives as best she can in a country at war and finds it very difficult, if not impossible, to get in touch with the grandmother. The city where he lives, Vinnytsia, only has two hours of electricity a day.
Laryza thanks those around her, the social worker or the school principal, for the support they are offering, but even so she confesses to EFE that she is very concerned about her situation.
Now it seems that he will receive aid of 200 euros that the Government grants to refugees. For months the woman has not stopped moving to try to get out of the bureaucratic maze in which she finds herself.
The youngest granddaughter eats at school but the eldest cannot have breakfast at the institute because when the grandmother did the paperwork there were no more places left.
The lawyer Plácido Alonso Peña found out about the problem by chance while he was taking steps at the Granadilla de Abona City Council.
There the woman told him what has been happening to her for the past eight months.
“I got involved by chance and of course without charging them anything,” he told EFE.
One solution would be to put the matter in the hands of a lawyer, but these procedures could take almost a year. Only then would it be possible to open an account in the name of the minors by court order.
The lawyer will start from Monday to make arrangements and contact the Red Cross, banks, City Hall and the institutions that are necessary to try to find a way out of something as basic as having a checking account.
Grandma has one, but they don’t allow her to include her granddaughters as well.
Alonso Fumero does not quite understand the reason for such a requirement when faced with a situation of “extreme need”.
The lawyer believes that “it is very unfortunate and it is very sad to see how this woman has to face the problems of everyday life.”
