The training that never came
Since 2021, three years after starting to operate, the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (Coneval) He warned that it was urgent to train the Nation’s Servants, because they were unaware of how social programs worked and did not have a working methodology, in addition to the fact that they needed better working conditions.
Three years after that recommendation, inequalities remain. Most of the 19,394 current Nation Servants receive monthly salaries of 11,294 gross pesos. Coordinators alone earn around 50,000 pesos.
According to the most recent data from the Ministry of Welfare (2022), these were the entities with the most National Servants:
- Veracruz 1,797 servers.
- State of Mexico (1,558)
- Mexico City (1,231)
- Chiapas (1,224)
- Michoacan (1,042)
- Jalisco (840 as of 2023)
For 2024, the Ministry of Welfare has been approved a budget of 543 billion pesos, of which 7 billion pesos are allocated to the payment of personal services of all employees of the agency.
For example, in 2022, the agency had a total budget of 299,315 million pesos, of which 5,420 million pesos were allocated to the promotion and evaluation of the social development policy (program P002), to which the Nation’s Servants are assigned. 82% of that budget went to the remuneration of this staff.
Without materials to work with
Training has not arrived, but there have been more responsibilities, say the employees, such as support for cleanup efforts in Guerrero after the arrival of Hurricane Otis last year.
According to their testimonies, the Nation’s Servants themselves bought garbage bags, brooms, utensils to pick up debris out of their own pockets and even paid for the breakdowns of the trucks of the Ministry of Welfare that transported them.
“They sent us to war without a rifle, without any training or anything, just like that, go to Guerrero,”
Esteban Cruz, former Servant of the Nation
According to them, the workday began at 4:00 a.m. and they often received food, cookies and soft drinks.
“There were many accidents there, from car accidents to walking accidents, where someone fell, fainted or broke a leg or an ankle. So, the ISSSTE did not consider it as a work accident, because there was no paper stating that they were being sent by the Welfare Commission to Guerrero to work. That accident did not qualify as a work accident, so there are a lot of irregularities,” adds Martínez.
