Universal Child Allowance: Subsidies Were Delivered To Deceased Parents and there is No Recall Plan
<p style="line-height: 20.7999992370605px;"><span style="line-height: 1.6em;">In February of last year, more than 200 subsidies were canceled due to the deaths of the parents who take care of the child. Still, the allowance was delivered in over 68% of cases. An audit report argues that despite this situation, "no evidence of a plan to recover the improper payments was acquired."</span></p> <div> </div>
The shortcomings in the delivery of subsidies of the Universal Child Allowance Program for Social Protection, were discovered by the General Audit’s Office (AGN, for its acronym in Spanish), after data matching between the settlements of the plan and the database of deaths obtained by the National Social Security Administration (ANSES, for its acronym in Spanish).
From this work, the Audit observed 211 adult beneficiaries who had children in their care and died in February 2010, the month under review. Of these people, 145 were given subsidies despite their deaths. "There were 54 deaths in 2009, the year the program was created, nine of which were long-standing and the others were between January and February 2010".
The report published last year on data for the period 2009-2010, says the agency did not undertake "a plan" to recover payment of "undue" perceptions once detected. Similarly, adding that in February 2010, there were "158 cases of children who died and were included in the settlement." Of that total, 105 grants were listed as "paid".
The watchdog says that the data has an average delay of "144 working days" of uploading information onto ANSES’ data base; it was this temporal disparity “what produced the overpayment of grants."
The AGN also reviewed the functioning of the program in the Integrated Care Unit ANSES, located in the neighborhood Monserrat. The auditors took a sample of 116 files of subsidies paid during December 2009 and found that "the entity delivered more grants than those needed”. However, in some cases “some children didn’t receive their allowance”.
The same analysis shows that, in three cases the allowance is paid even though the data did not have both parents in ANSES’ "data base". According to the audit, "this situation doesn’t allow the requirements of the applicant to be substantiated". In three other cases, the benefit was paid even though the child's parents were formally working and "having an unemployed status" is an exclusive requirement.
In order to check the ANSES’ controls prior to payment of the Universal Child Allowance, the AGN analyzed databases of beneficiaries of various social plans of the provinces of The City of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Córdoba, and Santa Fe. The Audit states that "the information provided in the data base presents "inconsistencies". In this sense, the federal watchdog states that "the liquidated time period could not be determined”, and therefore, it is not known if at the time of the payment the social subsidy was in effect.”