The mayors of the Broad Front, Carolina Cosse, Yamandú Orsi and Andrés Lima, will formally propose to the Congress of Mayors the continuity of the Job Opportunity program, known as “solidarity wages”. This was confirmed by the community chief of Salta to The Observer in his capacity as vice president of the organization’s Board, made up of white Guillermo López and red Richard Sander.
The Frente Amplio mayors met last week to evaluate the steps to follow as a political force in Congress, as he learned The Observer. “The balance we make of the program, not only those of the Broad Front, is positive. The work was seen and the population recognizes it,” Lima declared. “It is a way to help 15,000 families in Uruguay who have been able to count on an income during all these months”he claimed.
The salteño added that “for neighborhood commerce it has been good” while “the money goes for food, for the daily, for the pot, not for luxuries”. The proposal will be raised in the next instance of the Congress of Mayors, scheduled for February 17. Its eventual approval will require parliamentary approval, since the program was created by law.
In mid-November, legislators voted for a four-month extension to the solidarity wages. The project sent by the Executive Branch and signed by President Luis Lacalle Pou established that an extension of the term “would allow the creation of conditions for economic and social indicators to reach or eventually exceed pre-pandemic levels.”
The president added that it was “timely” that the end of the program “is not abrupt, and yes with a decreasing performanceas a way to ensure that the beneficiaries, being linked for longer, have the job skills that allow them, within a context of recovery of activity levels, to insert themselves in another activity permanently”.
The positions will remain active until March 30 and the government does not have an extension on the agenda. Since January, day laborers have been working six days a fortnight –instead of twelve, as they did at the beginning– and receive half ($6,250) of the nominal monthly salary that corresponded to them when the plan began. Asked about whether it would be convenient to renew the contracts of the current day laborers or call for a new draw, the mayor of the Frente Amplio indicated that this “is the action of the national government” and that, according to the bench, “it is good that it continues.”
as he knew The Observerone of the indicators to be put forward by the leaders of the Broad Front refers to the fact that From May to December of last year there was an increase of 40,000 new contributors to the Social Security Bank (BPS), almost half of which –15,000, specifically– corresponded to solidarity wages.
The program emerged in the middle of last year at the initiative of the white mayors, at the impulse of Floridian Guillermo López. The current president of Congress has declared himself –since the day he took office at the head of the organization– inclined to continue with the support. consulted by The Observerthe hierarch pointed out that they are asking each departmental government for the most basic data to pass the line and evaluate the social plan.
The nationalist pointed out that in “unofficial talks” they are evaluating the social and labor initiative as a “more than valid tool” to which to give continuity.
The creation by law of the program generated that 250,605 people will register to apply to the 15 thousand positions available. This implied that only 6% of the applicants accessed the job opportunity. On that date, the Minister of Labor, Pablo Mieres, acknowledged before the large number of applicants that “15,000 jobs were not going to solve the problem of unemployment.”
