The association regrets “the bureaucratic labyrinth” to access the IMV “in the greatest social crisis in history”

MADRID, 20 May. (EUROPA PRESS) –

The Association of Directors and Managers in Social Services has warned that, four years after the implementation of the Minimum Living Income (IMV), the benefit “only reaches 12.2% of the population that lives below the poverty line” and has reproached the Government for not having established “any coordination” with municipal social services to increase their coverage.

Likewise, the association has denounced the existing territorial differences between communities that range from 24.5% of population coverage below the poverty line in Euskadi to 5.9 in the Balearic Islands.

The managers of Social Services have accused the executive of “not meeting the objective that was set that in a few months the IMV would reach the 850,000 families that live in extreme poverty in our country. Meanwhile, the persistence of the “queues” of hunger” should, according to the association, “embarrass the rulers” whom it accuses of “government incompetence in managing the vaccine against poverty, as they described the Minimum Living Income.”

According to data collected by the Association of Directors and Managers in Social Services in April, 589,948 families were beneficiaries of the IMV, with a total of 1,771,480 people. The group has recalled that the Minimum Living Income includes both the basic subsistence income, for families with income below the guaranteed income, and the supplement of aid for children that allows incomes less than 3 times the guaranteed income to be completed.

Families that receive the basic subsistence income for having incomes lower than what is considered “guaranteed income” are “only”, according to the entity, 392,902 households (1,006,763 people), 2.1% of the Spanish population. Likewise, he recalled that the initial forecast, when the IMV was implemented in 2020, was to reach 850,000 who are in a situation of severe poverty (17% of the Spanish population, 2.3 million people).

“The reality is that only 46.2% coverage of severe poverty has been achieved,” the group explained. And, they added, if the risk of poverty is taken as a reference, there are currently 8,260,000 in Spain in that situation, being below 60% of the median income. Consequently, the IMV “only” reaches 12.2% of people at risk of poverty.

At a territorial level, the association has insisted on the “big differences” in this implementation between Autonomous Communities. The IMV reaches more than 20% of the population below the poverty line in the Basque Country (24.6%), Ceuta (23.5) and Melilla (22.6%), but does not reach 10% in Castilla La Mancha (8.7%), Catalonia (8.6%), Canary Islands (8.3%) and Balearic Islands (5.9%).

Closer to the national average of 12.2% are communities such as Navarra (17.7%), Asturias (16.5%), La Rioja (15.8%), Andalusia (14.4%), Aragón (13.6%), Madrid (13.07%), Extremadura (13.4%), Cantabria (12.2%), Castilla y León (12.17%), Valencian Community (11.01%), Galicia (10.9%).

Given these data, the Association of Directors and Managers in Social Services “an even greater push is necessary to incorporate the IMV in the management of primary care social services.” They consider that “community social services are a capillary network that reaches all citizens regardless of the municipality in which they reside and their personal and social situation.”

However, the organization has lamented, “the Ministry of Inclusion and Social Security has not established any coordination that, without a doubt, would have helped the implementation of the IMV, improving access times and the economic situation of many families.” . In his opinion, “the bureaucratic labyrinth designed to access the IMV has caused, in the greatest social crisis in history, thousands of people in vulnerable situations to spend months of their lives suffering moments of great precariousness.”