By Veronica Dalto
Buenos Aires, Aug 7 (EFE) . – Social and political organizations participated this Sunday in the classic annual march of San Cayetano in Buenos Aires in honor of the patron saint of bread and paintings and that, on this occasion, intervenes in the midst of the confusing economic situation of Argentina “suffocating” inflation, devaluation of wages and very high poverty rates.
Social organizations accumulated on Sunday morning in the capital district of Liniers, near the sanctuary of San Cayetano, where every August countless faithful honor the Italian saint by camping for several days around the church to enter on August 7. ask your benefactor for paintings or thank them for what they have brought them over the past year.
This year’s comes after the church opened its doors for the first time after two years of coronavirus prevention.
The Archbishop of Buenos Aires Mario Poli, who is also Cardinal Primate of Argentina, presided over the Mass in the church, where he warned that bread “becomes (more expensive) because of the suffocating inflation” that plagues Argentina, which “causes misery” among the public, urging the faithful to deploy among themselves “fraternal attitudes of solidarity” that “allow Argentina to rebuild itself. “
Meanwhile, members of social organizations marched to the center of Buenos Aires with the aim of “fighting” for bread, land, housing and cadres and “promoting” a law that would create a framework for the so-called “popular economy” with proposals such as a universal wage for all and access to land, according to the Union of Workers of the Popular Economy (UTEP). who called for the march.
The social organizations that marched are related to the government and have been in the streets for less than a week after the new Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa, took and announced measures that did not fully meet their demands in a context of inflation of more than 90% Forecast For this year, more than 40% of Argentines live in poverty and with serious macroeconomic imbalances.
“Given the agenda of the sector . . . that fights for particular interests at the expense of the majority,” the UTEP took to the streets to “impose” its “agenda that fights for the interests and needs” of those at the back of the ladder nacional. la economy, the organization said.
The demands to alleviate the suffering of the highs are also contrasted with the context of an unemployment rate in Argentina of just 7% in the first quarter of this year.
“In Argentina what we have are bad jobs,” Jorge Colina, president of the Argentine Institute of Social Development (Idesa), told EFE, given that “the unemployment rate is relatively low, in numbers of singles, but the informal economy remains. “to 50% (of the current population)”, that is, those who paint in the underground economy and on their own, than for a boss.
“Half of the other people are in the informal economy, they have paintings, but they are underpaid and precarious,” he said.
With those low-paying jobs, Argentines face inflation that reached 64% in June and that is what “drives away investment,” without which “formal jobs are created, smart productivity,” Colina said, adding that “the casual economy is the escape valve of unemployment.
He said that “the deficient are other people who paint in the informal economy, who paint hard, but that is not enough to lift them out of poverty. “
In this scenario, vulnerable staff get three types of social assistance: the Universal Child Benefit, the Food Card and Social Plans, which are available to casual staff or others who are not looking for work, Colina said.
Members of the social organizations that administer those state-funded social plans are being questioned through lawmakers and the public and some of them were among those who marched from the church of San Cayetano on Sunday.
In fact, Massa is pushing for an audit of social plans and education systems to get other people out of the informal economy and back into formal employment.
EFE vd/eat/pb