The Episcopal Commission for Social Pastoral began the traditional Social Week 2022 in Mar del Plata, with an agenda that included inclusion, the employment situation, the redistribution of wealth and care for the environment, and with calls from the speakers to prioritize policies of “land, shelter and work” to cover the needs of the most neglected sectors.
The president of the Argentine Episcopal Conference (CEA), Monsignor Oscar Ojeaconsidered that a “true development plan” should be carried out to “direct” the need for “land, shelter and work” demanded by a sector of society, when expounding at the opening of the meeting that will last until Sunday in the spa town.
“We all would like there to be employment for everyone, but that does not seem like a realistic prospect in the short term,” said Ojea at the start of the conference organized by the Social Ministry.
The president of the CEA considered that salaried employment with “collective agreement, Christmas bonus and vacations” cannot absorb “the entire available labor force.”
“We all would like there to be jobs for everyone, but that doesn’t seem like a realistic prospect in the short term”stressed the president of CEA and bishop of San Isidro.
In this sense, he highlighted a “humanistic and socially just vision” to contemplate the conditions “of those workers who are outside” the traditional work system.
“We should not talk so much about social plans, which are necessary at this juncture, but about a true comprehensive human development plan that includes a project to repopulate our country to address the dire need for land, shelter and work that a large part of our people have,” Ojea proposed.
The Bishop noted that there is “an enormous challenge” to “create work” with a “living wage” that allows “sustaining purchasing power.”
“In the Argentina there are 5,687 villas or popular neighborhoods. In recent years the poor and indigent have increased. Here is the hardest core of poverty,” said the bishop.
“The gap between us has widened,” he added, and although he considered work a necessity that dignifies human beings, he also highlighted the figure of the entrepreneur.
“The businessman is a fundamental figure of any good economy. The true entrepreneur is the one who knows his workers because he works alongside them and with them,” he added.
While, the Minister of Social Development, Juan Zabaleta, urged today to “work together” to “go on the road to job recovery” because “no one is saved alone”when exhibiting at the opening panel of the Social Week.
“We agree with Father Oscar Ojea: the computer is the job and the State has to be more there,” he said, referring to the statements made at the opening of the panel by the bishop of San Isidro and president of the Argentine Episcopal Conference and pointed out: “We need the mayors and the governors to accompany us”.
In this sense, he maintained that “the debates have to serve to improve” and stated: “We have to work together to go on the path of recovering work because nobody is saved alone, we are saved as a group.”
The minister affirmed that on December 29 “the decision was made that those who are in the Empower Work program can freely choose to change the place where they work” and assured that the Government seeks “to take care and be transparent so that they can have present and future objectives.”
For his part, hethe Minister of the Buenos Aires Government, Cristina Álvarez Rodríguez He stressed that “every day and each one gets up every day to give their contribution as many do, militating to change society and achieve equality.”
“In this meeting there are militants who fight every day to transform the reality of each neighborhood and I want to highlight those who work daily and do it together to seek equality in the province and in Argentina that we owe each other,” he said.
“As a government minister of the province of Buenos Aires accompanying Governor Axel Kicillof, but also as a person and being honest from my worldview of that word so used as social justice, which is nothing more than the fight against inequality”, he added.
While, the mayor of Mar del Plata, Guillermo Montenegro expressed: “The people who inhabit this world are the only ones responsible and therefore the only ones who can take care of it.
“Pope Francis refers to the common house as the planet, the world in which we live and taking care of it is about coexistence: if I mess up my house, I must tidy it up, because I do not live alone,” the community chief remarked.
