The Municipality of Montevideo (IM) affirmed this Tuesday that it will maintain support for the popular pots despite the announcement by the Ministry of Social Development (Mides) to withdraw support for the Popular and Solidarity Coordinator due to the controversy due to the lack of data by part of it. “We not only provide support, we monitor and control,” said the departmental chief, Carolina Cosse at a press conference.
“If a pot closes, we stop giving it food or if it changes in the weekly frequency, we also vary the amount of supplies that are given to it. We check every week, all the time and adjust. So we’re going to continue,” Cosse said.
The head of the Montevideo Department of the National Party, Laura Raffo, had already described this Monday as “outrageous” that the mayor positioned herself on the side of the CPS. “She chose to defend the network of pots, the intermediary, instead of defending those who need food, who is the final beneficiary,” she said.
What is there to discuss?
Beyond this, Cosse considered that “a pseudo discussion” is taking place. In this sense, he criticized: “We are trapped in a discussion that we should not have at the public level, because they know what the solution to this is, work.”
“If there was work, the pots would not exist because people could eat at home, because they would have work,” he emphasized. “So, what needs to be discussed is why there is no work, not if the pots are supported more or less,” he continued. “Note that we are trapped in a discussion to see who supports the pots when in reality what needs to be discussed is why there are 300 popular pots in Montevideo,” he insisted.
“I could ask: what can we say about people on the streets? Isn’t it necessary to support it? What is the intermediary there? There is no middleman. So, you have to assume the responsibilities that you have in the different places of responsibility », she assured.
The mayor believed, in this line, that “those are the things that must be discussed and not stay in a discussion that, in reality, does not touch the central point.” She stressed that “there are big problems right now that need serious attention.”
In addition to work, Cosse named poverty. “There are 60,000 more poor people and poverty in children from 0 to 6 years old increased by around 30%,” she recalled. Of every 100 children, more than 22 are in poverty, more than 22 in the first thousand days of their lives who knows how they fed themselves », she lamented.
“The economy is growing in the order of 3%-4% and real wages are falling by around 3%. So, those things that have to be taken care of », he concluded.
