Every time I publish an article critical of the management of Dependency in the Canary Islands, I hope it will be the last, because I always think it can't get any worse. But then the data comes and shatters that hope. The data for March is particularly catastrophic, but also eloquent about the priorities and capacity of the Government of the Canary Islands in matters of Social Welfare and attention to Dependency.
9,012 fewer benefits compared to December. There is no way to sweeten that data. In the first quarter of 2025, the benefits granted have been reduced by that figure. This means fewer financial benefits for care in the family environment (PECEF), fewer financial benefits linked to the service (PEVS), but also fewer day centers, fewer residential centers, and fewer telecare services, and therefore, worse care for the group of dependent people and their families in the Canary Islands, who look in astonishment at a Government incapable of attending to them not as it should be, but as required by the Law on the Promotion of Personal Autonomy and Care for people in a situation of dependency, for almost 20 years.
This lack of diligence and nerve is a shot in the foot for the Autonomous Community. The fewer people attended to, the less funding from the State, which contributes based on the number of people in a situation of dependency in the system. The less funding from the State, the fewer people attended to. And so on in a loop. Employment in the sector is slowed down, because fewer caregivers are needed for fewer people. The purchasing power of families who invest the aid in the care of dependent people is reduced. And these, ultimately, see how their quality of life degrades.
The PIA, or Individual Care Program, assesses the dependent person and includes the rights that assist them according to the Law, so it may contain more than one benefit: a place in a day center and financial aid, for example. But it cannot contain more, and certainly never several financial benefits at the same time, because the legislation itself contemplates those limits. From the PSOE, we already denounced in January that the Government of the Canary Islands had granted in 2024 benefits that quadrupled the number of PIAs issued, a scandalous irregularity intended to disguise a terrible management with figures. And now, in addition, the 9,012 benefits that I mentioned earlier have magically disappeared from the system. At least from the Ministry and the General Directorate, they have not blamed the computer application, as last year. Not yet. In any case, the reason for this dramatic reduction in benefits will have to be answered in parliamentary headquarters by the Minister of Social Welfare, since I do not even want to think that to disguise the figures, the General Directorate sent to Imserso in the last months of 2024, in a premeditated way, benefits that were not being enjoyed, I repeat that I do not even want to think about it.
But there is more, the basement of managerial ineptitude always has one more floor. In March, according to their own data, only 182 PIAs were recognized (I think of the rate of around 1,000 PIAs per month that we reached under the presidency of Ángel Víctor Torres, and indignation consumes me); compared to this, 748 people died without being attended to in the month of March, a figure that increases to 2,178 in the first quarter of the year. Hundreds of families saw a loved one leave who never got from the Government of the Canary Islands the attention they deserved and that the Law guaranteed them. If we are able to put ourselves for a minute in the shoes of those families, we realize how important it is to manage Dependency well and the real and direct impact it has on the lives of dependent people, how it changes their daily world, how it strengthens their dignity as citizens and as human beings.
No less serious is the fact that, at this point in 2025, the Councils are providing services in Dependency without an Agreement with the Government of the Canary Islands, assuming alone the totality of the responsibility, both legal and economic. There has not even been, until this month of April, a draft or a pre-agreement to sign; it is understood that the Coalition Canaria and Popular Party Government has not found a gap in the agenda to sit down to talk with the service providers of the legal instrument that orders and gives guarantees to their work, and therefore, to the dependent people in the Islands. Or that, or there is simply no will for consensus and dialogue in this aspect.
I insist until exhaustion on this point: here we are talking about the well-being of especially vulnerable people, of people who really need the support of the whole society, channeled through Dependency, for their day to day. I ask for the umpteenth time to the minister and the general director to fulfill their obligations and take advantage of the experience and capacity of the workers in the area to return to Dependency the rhythm that it had achieved in 2022 and 2023. So that the figures for April and May do not embarrass us all again and crush the hopes and demands of the families who most need the outstretched hand of the Administration.
