President Javier Milei’s government has summoned hundreds of thousands of people in Argentina who receive disability benefits to present themselves for evaluation and prove they should receive assistance.
Earlier this month, the Health Ministry said Thursday that anyone receiving the Pensiones No Contributivas por Invalidez Laboral (PNCIL) benefit would face an “audit” to establish whether the benefit corresponds to them.
On Thursday, officials began summoning more than 300,000 people from the provinces Chaco, Buenos Aires, Tucumán, Mendoza, San Luis and Santa Fe.
In this first phase, beneficiaries are required to present themselves for a medical evaluation, where they will have to present documentation and undergo a check-up. ANDIS staff will then analyse the background to the condition and issue their assessment.
The push seeks to “guarantee compliance with legal requirements” and ensure that the benefit reaches “only those who need it,” said the Health Ministry. The process will eventually assess over a million people in that category in its crusade to slash public spending, it added.
All those disability benefits will be subjected to evaluation according to medical criteria established by the health authorities to ensure “that the benefit exclusively reaches those who need it,” said the Milei government.
According to projections by the Health Ministry and the ANDIS national disability agency, revising the system could lead to estimated savings in the order of 900 billion pesos this year.
"This plan started in 2024 due to irregularities detected while processing pensions," said the government, assuring that out of the over 20,000 pensions audited, "only 20 percent met the requirements."
Furthermore, said the portfolio, "150 dead people and 212 convicts collecting pensions for the handicapped" were detected last year, as well as "14 fugitives."
"The audit will be carried out via a phased and progressive process, permitting evaluation in minute detail and ensuring that grounded and transparent decisions are taken," communicated the Health Ministry.
Fears and concerns
Civil associations grouped in the Redi (Red por los Derechos de las Personas con Discapacidad) network voiced concerns earlier this month after a resolution by the National Agency for the Disabled establishing medical criteria to evaluate access to pensions.
Redi argued in a communiqué that those criteria run counter to those rights because "being handicapped is not an individual question linked to a pathology but is born out of the interaction between certain characteristics of people and their barriers with the environments they inhabit."
"There are no 'invalids' as far as work is concerned since everybody can work to the degree the required support is provided. To define who should collect a pension and who not, the state should evaluate the socio-economic barriers faced instead of looking at medical tags slapped on them," said the organisation.
The disability pension is equivalent to 70 percent of a mínimum retirement benefit or some 260,000 pesos this month (US$240 at the official exchange rate), a meagre sum to face the cost living in Argentina where a four-person household needs at least a million pesos not to be statistically poor.
Last September the Milei government modified the requisites for access to these pensions "in order to end a system using state funds for political patronage," it was argued.
The most important point was to overturn a decree in late 2023 making it possible to have a job and to receive the benefit.
– TIMES/AFP/NA
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