The Liberal Initiative filed a complaint on Wednesday with the Ombudsman’s Office about the allocation of the special education subsidy and the disability bonus, criticizing “social insensitivity” because the State is “failing the most fragile.”
Clearly there is a cut in at least two social benefits: one is the special education subsidy, and what is seen is that the figures for payments made during the first months of this year are well below expectations, and another is the subsidy. due to disability, which also shows payment numbers below what are the same periods of previous years”, Rui Rocha, deputy of the Liberal Initiative (IL), explained to the Portuguese news agency.
According to the liberal, this is the time to “involve the Ombudsman” in this problem, remembering that, in a similar situation during the last intervention of the troika in Portugal, the Ombudsman “also intervened and asked for a urgent review of the processes and that they are attended to on time“.
“We are facing an insensitivity of the State, which is failing the most fragile, and all means are necessary to understand what is happening and especially if measures are taken to review the situation,” he said.
Thus, IL filed a complaint with the Ombudsman, Maria Lúcia Amaral, hoping that “it will be possible to clarify the situation and, above all, that those who need this follow-up will not be deprived of it”, recalling the deputy that “already There have been demonstrations by parents, educators, concerned about this situation”.
“We have news of many denials, complaints of denials that later remain unanswered. There are processes that take years to be granted or at least to explain the reason for a rejection, changes in the procedures, inconsistency of decisions between the different supports and, therefore, here is a situation that is affecting the most fragile”, he described. . .
Rui Rocha said that the party called the Minister of Labor and Social Security to parliamentAna Mendes Godinho, —an audition scheduled for September 14— and also the President of the Social Security Institute (ISS), Catarina Marcelino, whose hearing took place earlier this month.
“The president of the ISS recognized the existence of some problems and, in the case of the special education subsidy, revealed that there would be some 17,000 applications already analyzed, but that 15,000 applications remained to be analyzed; now practically half of the total applications submitted for the special education grant,” he said.
The deputy from IL said that, from the minister in charge, “no type of comment has been heard, neither in parliament nor outside parliament”, considering that the hearing scheduled for mid-September “is too long in such a delicate situation ”. ”.
“We understand that this is also the way to try to do something to respond to these families and these children,” he said, regarding the intervention request made to the Ombudsman’s Office.
At the hearing at the beginning of the month, Catarina Marcelino denied that there are fewer children supported with the special education subsidyensuring that there was a 20% increase in paid processes compared to last year.
When heard in the Commission for Inclusion and Social Security, in the Assembly of the Republic, the president of the ISS stated that there was “a misunderstanding” regarding the news about the allocation of the special education subsidy, a benefit that is paid to ensure the compensation of the charges related to the support of children and young people with disabilities, assuring that “there were no cuts”.
In mid-June, multiple media outlets reported that one in four special education grants had been cut between January and April and that families were facing indiscriminate cuts.
Source: Observadora
