In the last hours, President Gustavo Petro announced that some deep reforms to the Department of Social Prosperity (DPS) and the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare (ICBF) in order to achieve the objectives of Colombia Power of Life and Without Hunger.
(Read: They demand the appointment of the Minister of Mines and Energy, Irene Vélez).
During the inauguration ceremony of the directors of Social Prosperity, Cielo Elainne Rusinque Urrego, and of the ICBF, Concepción Baracaldo Aldana, the president traced the roadmap of what these entities will be in his Government and highlighted the missions that the new officials have with the changes.
In principle, Petro assured that what is sought is that the functions that before they had the ministries and that these entities were assuming. “There is $500 billion that DPS handles for housing. That should be in the Ministry of Housing”, as well as “$1 billion and some resources for the elderly, through the famous bonds of $70,000, $80,000 that do not take away anyone’s hunger”, he assured.
The funds, according to Petro, must go to Colpensiones in hopes that the pension reform radiates resources to the Senior Adult program. This will happen next year in order to have 100% pension coverage through a bonus that is no longer 80,000 pesos but 500,000 pesos.
For this reason, he insisted that the amount of resources to achieve this objective “It implies a pension reform, that is to say that part of the contributions that remain in private funds today go to Colpensiones, originating the system of pillars”.
Along with this, the president referred to the Youth in Peace program that he implemented when he was mayor of Bogotá. Regarding this aspect, he affirmed that Social Prosperity, in coordinated work with the ICBF, will advance the reissue of the Youth in Peace program “which was framed from a security perspective, which lasted a year in the city of Bogotá, but which gave fundamental results”.
(Keep reading: President Petro details his proposal on pension changes).
Petro, then, assured that if the program was extended in the country, there would be 100,000 and not 10,000 young people who would benefit, and this It would imply an investment of 1 billion pesos.
Resources that will be allocated so that young people do not enter or stop belonging to the gangs “that they are doing what we already know” and that they enter “to study or finish studying”, which would determine that “we would have a fundamental engine to reduce the homicide rate, it will be the indicator, to reduce violence in general in the areas of heat map of the most violent municipalities and cities in the country”.
The president recognized that the director of the institution has the main mission of “Sweep the entire ICBF of political mafias at the national level. Without that, we cannot talk about serious programs for children.”
“The ICBF is not political influence peddling, neither from the right nor from the center nor from the left, even if they campaign on Twitter. It remains outside of any type of political, partisan, group contamination, because boys and girls come first, an issue that has to be a reality in a progressive government,” he emphasized.
Along with this, he said that the institution must sovercome corruption, the prison and ‘wretched’ vision that “since they are unprotected children such as the margin of society, then they are treated with poverty”.
To do this, he stressed that it is important to professionalize the community mother, talk about nurseries, build affections in the first three years and so on.
(Read: Petro Government: the entities that are still missing for appointments).
Finally, “start the policy against hunger” and the “Icbf, not only that entity, has a fundamental role to play in a Hunger-Free Colombia, in the fight against hunger that has become our priority in these months, especially when The climate crisis is going to show all of Colombia its virulence in these months that the year is ending.”
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