Welfare denies that nation’s servers buy equipment to work

Fernando Camacho Servin

Newspaper La Jornada
Thursday, April 21, 2022, p. eleven

Despite the fact that the law expressly prohibits it, many regional coordinators of the nation’s servers (SDN) require their subordinates to buy –sometimes themselves– various implements that they need to work, such as a cell phone, a vest , cap, backpack and shirts with the badge of the Ministry of Welfare (SB), for amounts that together can exceed 4 thousand pesos, said dissatisfied employees.

In response to a request for information prepared by this newspaper, the agency stated that, by joining as an SDN, the employees they are only granted a badge issued by the Delegation of Development Programs in which they are assigned.

Similarly, to the 19 thousand 120 workers of said team that exist on a national scale they are not asked for extra money for work badgesOtherwise, the officials who incur in this fault may be sanctioned in the terms of articles 47 and 52 of the Federal Law of Responsibilities of Public Servants.

However, in everyday work the reality is very different, according to active members of the SDN. On condition of anonymity, workers from three different entities indicated that many regional coordinators ask them for a cooperation of up to a thousand pesos for giving them a package consisting of a vest, a cap, a backpack and a shirt.

Added to the above are the cell phones that employees must use to register beneficiaries, and which in theory are given to them as a loan only during the time they work as workers. According to the complainants, in practice a cell phone is sold to them in installments for 3,000 pesos, when the real cost of the devices does not exceed 1,800.

On some occasions, they added, the badge that the SB grants them can be the object of profit for certain authorities, because although the credential it’s just a piece of cardboardthe officials charge them 100 or 200 pesos just to deliver them, with the threat that if they do not pay them, they will not sign the accreditation or they will not put the required official stamp on it.

According to another active employee, although the law does not establish that the SDN have to be uniformed, in practice they cannot do without the vest, cap and t-shirts that many regional coordinators sell them, because if they are identified without wearing it, they can be subject to attention calls and administrative acts.