The high social demand presented by the municipality of Santa Cruz has forced the City Council to increase the money allocated to Municipal Institute of Social Care (IMAS), which at this point in the year has already executed 80% of its budget, so it needs a credit supplement to meet the payment of economic benefits for social care (PEAS), as well as aid for disability, and a series of expenses not foreseen in the initial budget. These needs add up to 2.5 million euros, which will be met by the Santa Cruz City Council.
Yesterday, the Capital Government Board, chaired by the mayor, José Manuel Bermúdez, approved a budget modification, under the credit supplement modality, amounting to 1,630,507.28 euros, “to meet the increased demand for the PEAS and disability aid”, explained the councilor. Likewise, he argued that “it is about giving certainty to vulnerable people in these uncertain times.” A figure to which another 919,000 euros will be added through a generic transfer from the City Council, which will complete those 2.5 million that the IMAS needs.
For her part, the Councilor for Social Action, Rosario González, who justified the budget increase as “an urgent need to address the requests for aid from the most vulnerable families in the municipality”, stressed that, “with this new investment, the City Council attends to the aid that is destined for individual subsidies to people with some type of disability”.
The councilor warned that “this credit supplement is intended to meet a series of unforeseen expenses and expenses that, although there is credit for it, have been overcome by the situation that affects the population in a situation of social vulnerability in the municipality. ”. Likewise, she emphasizes that the total requests, that is, the total budget amounts to meet the resource needs that have been detected, amount to those 2,550,000 euros.
González assured that “the IMAS has already executed more than 80% of what has been budgeted to date” and argues that “the management of the number of PEAS has almost doubled compared to the year 2021, since 23,099 aids have been made more than the previous year in the same period for an amount of 1,617,395.84 euros more, of which the bulk of them are food, growing by 21,503 PEAS, which account for 91.54% of the total.
In addition, he stressed that “management also increases in the rest, especially in disability aid, which has gone from 98 in 2021 to 342 in 2022, with an amount that has grown by 201,464.41 euros.”
“On the other hand – the councilor deepened -, PEAS management levels of household appliances, furniture and works are maintained”. In the comparison between the first half of 2021 and the same period of 2022, the difference in social investment is precisely the budget modification of 1.6 million euros. In addition, “in 2021, from January to June we spent 5.6 million and this year the figure is 7.2.”
