The Minister of Social Rights of the Government of the Canary Islands, Noemí Santana, warned this Friday that if the regional Executive does not give her the means and mechanisms to improve the data of her department in matters such as dependency, she should assess the continuity of Podemos in the regional Executive, where it governs with PSOE, NC and ASG.
Santana pointed out that the Ministry she currently leads "has always been the ugly duckling" of the Canarian Government, while "the spoiled child has always been Tourism." Therefore, given the criticism she is receiving for her management, the head of Social Rights has stressed that to do the job, they mainly lack personnel.
"If we are not given the means, the mechanisms, I do believe that we should assess whether we should continue or not because if not, we are generating a feeling of failure, frustration to the citizens, which I believe we do not deserve," she added.
To project the "few resources" that the Ministry has, Santana cited as an example that while Castilla y León have "800 assessors," the Canary Islands "have 64," indicating that they "cannot perform miracles." Therefore, she has demanded that the regional Government get involved "100 percent" because a Ministry "cannot fight unilaterally."
Focusing on the data, Santana defended that in the first six months of 2021, the "dependency files that were being processed have doubled compared to the previous four years," which she indicated may have occurred due to the incorporation of personnel into the Ministry.
In addition, she added that on average they are resolving 467 files per month compared to 258 in 2020 or 290 in 2019, so she has defended that "it is processed faster and in greater quantity," but admitted that they also have "many difficulties."
She also referred to the 5,300 files that they had to include in the system because they "were put in a box forgotten by the hand of God," highlighting that "visibility has been given to those files that would never have been evaluated because they were inside a box."
Santana wanted to clarify that when she arrived at the Ministry of Social Rights, the Canary Islands was already a leader "in poverty, was at the bottom of dependency, in the lack of processing of non-contributory pensions; it is a situation that remains the same, not worse." Thus, she has stated that she has "not" done "everything" she would have liked, but she has also pointed out that in between there has been "a pandemic, a migratory crisis."
