Caritas Burgos has decided not to sign with the City Hall the extension of the temporary reception agreement for immigrants until an agreement is reached to include Burgos Acoge, Accem and Atalaya in the City Hall budget for 2025 , which were excluded at the request of Vox in negotiations to advance on next year’s accounts.
Caritas, which would renounce the 19,000 euros of the agreement, informed through a statement sent to the media of the decision adopted after the meeting held this Monday between the three organizations concerned and Caritas itself with the mayor, Cristina Ayala, the door – word from Vox. , Fernando Martínez Acitores, and the social services advisor, Andrea Ballesteros.
The diocesan delegate, Mario Vivanco, said that the work carried out by the entities that care for vulnerable migrants “is indispensable” and expressed his specific support for Burgos Acoge, Accem and Atalaya, with whom Caritas works “on a regular basis” .
For Cáritas, the reception, promotion and protection of migrants “contribute to a fairer and more fraternal society” and ensure that, following the evangelical principles that guide its actions, it serves “equally all people in the need.”
NGOs defend the endorsement of municipal technicians
Nuria Revilla, from Burgos Acoge, who was spokesperson for the three NGOs involved, described the measure as “drastic for the city, for municipal social services” and defended that the data from the municipal technical reports “corroborate the work” . what these entities do.
Likewise, he recalled that it is a total amount of 190,000 euros, and insisted that these organizations served “more than 7,000 people in the city” in 2023, for which he “launched a call for co-responsibility” and “understanding”. ” since there are three “entities specialized in serving the migrant population of Burgos”. “These are people who are in our educational centers, who are in our businesses, who are our neighbors”, he recalled .
For her part, the spokesperson for the government team and social services advisor, Andrea Ballesteros, promised to “continue speaking” and reaffirmed that it is a coalition government, which means that municipal budget items must be negotiated until 2025. while the organizations concerned hope “that this measure will be canceled. Let him retire.
A decision “totally contrary to responsibility”
They consider that the decision of the government team is “totally contrary to the sense of responsibility”, as declared by Nuria Revilla, who insisted that “everything does not happen, we cannot negotiate with everything, there are minimums” and that is why they defended the need to “keep the door open” to return to this measure.
Nuria Revilla explained that the withdrawal of the agreement “has a significant impact” and indicated that during the meeting it was explained that “each euro received” by these entities is multiplied by a hundred, “a task, that of organizations that cannot “do public social services.” »
“They inform, guide, but do not process residence and work permits, nationality applications, community permits, requests from companies when they want to hire a worker and they do not give advice on care of health”, said Revilla, who believes that there is This could be “a collapse of municipal social services because these are people who need to be taken care of”.
For their part, social workers at the town hall have requested a meeting to assess the “implications that the removal of these agreements will have on their daily work,” according to Ballesteros, while Martínez-Acitores indicated that the decision would not be made. modified and The 2025 accounts will be provisionally approved during the November plenary session.
