Thursday, March 28

Fourteen months without receiving the absolute disability pension due to the collapse in the Las Palmas Social Security


Esther Martínez feels helpless. It’s been almost fourteen months since the sentence that recognized her absolute permanent disability is final and she continues without receiving the pension. Since February 2022 she has not received any income. During this time she has survived with the help of relatives, with the compensation she received after a traffic accident and with a small amount that she had saved through a pension plan, frozen for a long time. At 64, she lives alone in a house in the town of San Fernando, in the south of Gran Canaria, suffering from continuous generalized pain that, according to what she says, keeps her bedridden for long periods of time. She suffers, among other pathologies, fibromyalgia.

Lack of personnel in Social Security: there are only seven officials on non-capital islands with more than 100,000 inhabitants

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In January of last year, the head magistrate of the Social Court 4 of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria ruled that this disease not only diminished “greatly” his working capacity, but also required care and a lifestyle “incompatible” with the performance of any profession. For this reason, she upheld her demand, granted her absolute permanent disability and, with it, the right to collect a pension equivalent to 100% of the regulatory base based on the years that she contributed in his activity as a salesperson. .

His lawyer has already urged the execution of the sentence on two occasions. The first in July and the second in November. Despite the court’s warning, the administration continues without paying. Esther is one of those affected by the collapse of Social Security in the province of Las Palmas. Her case is not isolated. The representative of Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) Hortensia Rodríguez, points out that, according to the latest data provided by the management, corresponding to February, there are 954 sentences for disability not yet executed.

The average wait, says the worker, is two years. “The one that has not been executed for more than a year. And the most, two years and two months. Complaints and denunciations follow one another. “It is very serious, he is playing with things to eat,” insists Hortensia Rodríguez. People who have recognized permanent disability by final judgment cannot have access to unemployment benefit or other types of aid even if it has not been executed.

“In this line of violation of rights, during that time they do not have the pensioner’s card either”, so that not only are they left without any remuneration, but also, they do not have that economic protection for, depending on the case, or either be exempt from paying for medicines or pay only a small percentage. Most of those affected, around 80% according to the union representative, receive minimum pensions. “Not only are they going to charge late, but badly,” she laments. And that money “is not going to replace the economic expense that has been made in pharmacies if they have not had the mischief to save all the invoices.”

The Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, José Luis Escrivá, visited the islands last October and promised a reinforcement of 83 workers to alleviate the overload. However, the unions warn that this staff has been distributed among all departments (General Treasury, Intervention, Social Institute of the Navy…) and that the CAISS (Social Security Service and Information Centers), which It is where the benefits of citizenship are managed, barely a small part has arrived. The Las Palmas de Gran Canaria office, where long queues have become a common sight in recent months, “has only been reinforced with two,” says the union representative.

The Government delegate in the Canary Islands, Anselmo Pestana, recently stated that the forecast is that the workforce in the Islands will increase by a number of between 120 and 180 workers to adapt to the population increase and face the management of new benefits, such as the Minimum Income Vital. Although the Ministry has not responded on this occasion to the questions formulated by this newspaper, it has previously insisted that it is working to “speed up the processes” and achieve improvement with the incorporations and with the training of personnel.

Esther Martínez has had to pay a manager to get her an appointment for next week. “This is the second time I have to pay. I was already in Telde in February, there were two occupied tables and the security person. Three people working. I asked the worker and she told me that there were no staff, that they got older, they were retired and they didn’t pay more. As if the citizen were to blame, there is no right, ”she complains.

The unions have been warning for years about the lack of resources in the Canary Islands. “Social Security personnel manage a lot of benefits, a lot of computer programs and a lot of law. Everything has to be read. For example, you have to know what the law interprets for a disabled senior, because if you don’t press the little button that touches, you can harm a person, ”explains Rodríguez. The CCOO delegate stresses that the work overload and “mismanagement” in Las Palmas have caused up to 17 office workers to leave, some even to a private activity, and that another 19 have also requested transfer, although they have had to remain in their posts because they did not obtain a position.

The union has already begun to detect cases in which people who have reserved their job for more than two years and who still do not receive their pension are summoned to review disabilities. These are workers who in the course of this time have experienced an improvement and receive a medical discharge even without having received the judicially recognized amounts. “What can happen is that they challenge again, present an expert opinion again and obtain a second favorable sentence without having collected the first one, in a second round of the court. The law did not provide for this abandonment, nor in the previous appointment, ”says Rodríguez. CCOO and UGT requested a regulation in September so that the maximum time for the payment of disability pensions would not exceed two months.

To prevent those affected from staying for so long without getting paid, the CCOO representative proposes to implement a system of provisional resolutions that already works with certain benefits when there are discrepancies. “If the sentence clearly states what is the base that must be paid and we have the person’s data and their account number, it can be recorded, it can be mechanized and provisionally paid for the first three months. Afterwards, the data is crossed (with the Treasury, the State Public Employment Service -SEPE-, the companies), they are verified and if there are differences, either the refund of amounts that are small is claimed, because the differences are small, or adds what he had to collect and was not taken into account”, explains Rodríguez, who adds that Royal Decree-Law 2/2023, on urgent measures to extend the rights of pensioners, incorporates an article on provisional resolutions for facilitate the collection of international pensions.

With this system, maintains the union delegate, the burden passes to the administration. “The principle of continuity of income is not being fulfilled. It would be necessary to establish a general guideline with this system of provisional resolutions, not only for disability pensions, but also for others, such as those of widowhood, which suffer a late execution ”.

The CCOO representative attributes “the debacle” of the Social Security in Las Palmas to the lack of personnel, to “mismanagement”, but also to the implementation of a system of distribution of charges between the different Social Security offices in the entire national territory that, in his opinion, has not been well studied. “I take care of a person, I collect and process the data, and then the pension or benefit will be resolved in Albacete, Ávila or Santa Cruz de Tenerife without me being able to contact those colleagues or to speed up, or to say that I saw your ID, or for issues that I could do here. The way of working has changed, that capacity has been lost and sometimes this implies that procedures are archived for presenting the documentation incorrectly and applying the administrative route to the letter. It is legitimate, but you also have to apply logic, first call the person and see how to solve it”.

Rodríguez regrets that in the last meeting the provincial director celebrated that the sentences pending execution had been reduced from 1,072 to 954. “They are not numbers, they are people. People who have lost their rights play with things to eat ”, he says.

“With this topic, I feel that nobody puts themselves in one’s shoes, nobody asks if I need something. They only give me receipts until the money runs out. The community, the contribution, the garbage, the insurance, the electricity, the water, the telephone… You do nothing but pay, pay and pay. I can not do anything else. They have made me doubt if it is real, if it is true of mine, ”says Esther.



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