Only 30% of applicants receive income support

The min­is­ter of labour, so­cial af­fairs and fam­i­lies, Chakir el Hom­rani, ac­knowl­edged yes­ter­day that the guar­an­teed in­come sup­port for cit­i­zens (RGC in Cata­lan) is granted to only 30% of those who re­quest it.

He also said that 120,004 peo­ple cur­rently re­ceive these funds, which amount to about 600 euro a month.

Hom­rani ap­peared yes­ter­day at the so­cial af­fairs par­lia­men­tary com­mis­sion to eval­u­ate how RGC was being im­ple­mented and was faced with much crit­i­cism from so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tions, who ac­cused him of re­ject­ing most ap­pli­cants. In re­sponse he stated that the rate of ac­cep­tance is now 21% higher than it was in June 2017.

The point of the RGC, which came in thanks to a law pro­moted through a pop­u­lar leg­isla­tive ini­tia­tive (ILP in Cata­lan), was to guar­an­tee that peo­ple and fam­i­lies liv­ing below the poverty line can have at least min­i­mum liv­ing stan­dards.

The labour min­is­ter also ar­gued that due to the ap­pli­ca­tion of ar­ti­cle 155, which in­volved Spain tak­ing con­trol over Cat­alo­nia’s fi­nances, the reg­u­la­tion that spec­i­fies and de­ter­mines the de­tails of the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the law could not be processed. “Many months have been lost due to the ap­pli­ca­tion of the 155” said the min­is­ter of labour.