Cort admits he ordered not to reinforce the migrant regularization service
The Social Services coordinator confirms that the decision was made by the political leadership
Palma City Council gave political instructions not to reinforce the staff of the Social Citizen Attention Office (OAC), despite the saturation of the service caused by the extraordinary migrant regularization process. This was confirmed this Thursday by the coordinator of Social Services, Patricia Pizá, during a Citizen Services commission, in statements that corroborate the complaint made by the workers last week.
Pizá responded this Thursday to a question from the Podemos councilor for Palma, Lucía Muñoz, as reported by Diario de Mallorca, and stated that "the order was given by the political direction to prevent citizens, in general, from being left without the essential services provided by the City Council".
Both the Podemos councilor and the rest of the left-wing representatives directed a series of questions at her related to the regularization process and the alleged political orders given by the Consistory not to reinforce the OAC staff, which are responsible for receiving and processing the vulnerability reports that some migrants need to access the measure. As explained to Europa Press by the MÉS per Palma councilor Miquel Ángel Contreras, who was present at the commission, Pizá did not respond to "almost anything" during her first intervention.
After the municipal groups on the left reformulated the questions, the coordinator of Social Services admitted that, in the words of the eco-sovereignist, "political instructions or guidelines" were given not to reinforce the OACs despite the increase in workload, although she did not clarify who gave them.
The municipal official alleged that this decision was made with the intention that the rest of the services offered by the City Council to citizens would not have their capacity for action diminished and would function normally.
Contreras reproached her that the act of reinforcing certain services when there is a peak in demand is "something usual in the administration" and it was already done, for example, during the coronavirus pandemic.
These political orders have been publicly denounced by parties such as MÉS per Palma and the PSOE of Palma, who have demanded the resignation of the councilor for Social Services, the popular Lourdes Roca.
Workers from the same municipal social services and entities such as the EAPN Balearic Network for Inclusion have also affirmed their existence, accusing Cort of trying to put a brake on the regularization process.
4,000 applications
The coordinator of Social Services, on the other hand, has detailed that the OACs have already received nearly 4,000 applications to issue vulnerability certificates, but that none have been processed yet.
This is due, she justified, to the fact that there are only five officials from the OAC Social in charge of these tasks, three to attend to users and two for processing the reports.
"It is working normally"
These explanations come the day after the City Council spokesperson, Mercedes Celeste, ruled out reinforcing the Social Services area following the regularization process promoted by the Spanish Government. Despite the long queues registered these days in various OACs, Celeste defended that the service "is functioning normally".
The municipal spokesperson made these statements at a press conference, to respond to criticism about the occasional saturation of some offices during the processing of documentation linked to this administrative process.
The CCOO union had previously denounced the lack of an increase in staff to cope with the issuance of vulnerability reports, one of the key requirements within the regularization procedures. In this context, Celeste assured that the town councils are trying to "respond to the chaos" that, she stated, has been generated "in all municipalities of the State" as a result of the measure promoted by the central government.