Human Capital minister Sandra Pettovello, and a personal friend of President Javier Milei, uses nearly a score of programmes, which come from agreements signed, on the one hand, with the Organisation of Ibero-American States (OEI), and, on the other hand, with the United Nations, to hire staff working in the mega-ministry.
In all, they are 17 programmes, 15 wih the OEI and two with the UN. Some come from previous administrations.
Even so, it is a kind of covered-up labour “outsourcing” since it allows the ministry to hire staff at lower salaries and use funds from bodies. The handling of said funds cost Pablo de la Torre his post, then in charge of the ministry’s social area, out of suspicion of using the resources for a “political cashbox”. De la Torre was ousted on May 30.
The data come from a request for public information by PERFIL, to which the ministry responded by breaching the deadlines and providing partial information grounded on the data being under an investigation before Sebastián Casanello’s court. Nowhere in the Public Information Access Law is it established that no information can be provided which is within a court case.
This is the second request for public information to which the government responds partly to PERFIL. The first one is related to data about which media received advertising spots from Aerolíneas Argentina.
“Under the el argument or regulating the law, the sense of the law changed and now authorities can claim they will not deliver the information because it is partly private information, which is not as per the law”, stated Diego Morales, Litigation and Defence for Cels, to this newspaper, and he added: “In some cases, the authorities give misleading responses, such as not providing the information because there are court cases on it. What is requested is not to access the investigative strategies of a prosecutor, but access to the Executive Branch’s information”.
What Pettovello refused to reply to this newspaper’s request is the number of workers hired under this method, and the amounts they are hired for. It is worth noting that ten months into the start of the administration, there are still boxes in Human Capital’s organisation chart that are still to be ticked.
In addition, on Friday last week, it became known that there were nearly 500 dismissals in the ministry. They were indeed contracts which were not renewed, 400 in the social area left in charge of former Larreta supporter Yanina Nano Lembo, 90 in the culture area and a few more in the Incaa cinema institute.
Specifically, they are three programmes used throughout the Human Capital mega-ministry; the first one to “develop activities of administrative support, technical assistance and research actions” and other tasks deemed a “priority”.
The second one is to “provide administrative support” to the Institutional Strengthening project, and the third one is to “provide technical and financial assistance”.
There are also two programmes in the Labour Secretariat, headed by Julio Cordero. One for support in administrative tasks and the other to “support the MTEYSS Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Security’s technical, operational and technological actions”.
In the Family, Childhood and Adolescence Secretariat (headed by Nano Lembo), there are three programmes in force. One to provide “administrative support” activities, another one for “administrative support services”. The third one is a programme agreed upon with the United Nations, also known as UNDP, aimed at “favouring the allocation of food policy as an instrument of enforcement and restitution of social rights”. Those funds are mostly aimed at soup kitchens.
In the meantime, the area left in charge of Carlos Torrendel has six programmes: “To arbitrate mechanisms, to increase progress in the educational field”, “implementation of programmes and projects for cooperation in education”, “strengthening of teaching training systems”, “strengthening of technical and professional education”, “strengthening of planning capacities”, “a call for chartered bodies of itemists and critical readers”.
There are also two programmes in the National Council for Coordination of Social Policies, left in charge of Gabriela Real. One to “coordinate technical services” and another for the “provision of administrative support”, which expired last March 31.
--TIMES/PERFIL
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