Due To a Lack of Funding Nursing Homes in The City Were not renovated
<p style="line-height: 20.8px;"><span style="line-height: 20.8px;">A report of the Buenos Aires General audit said the Ministry of Economy did not return a request for borrowing money to finance geriatrics. The budget for the work was of $ 31 million, but the homes for the elderly had no plans to substantiate the costs.</span></p>
A report by the Auditor General of the City of Buenos Aires (AGCBA, for its acronym in Spanish) of the Secretariat of the Third Age reported the body never performed the work provided for elderly homes because of a lack of funding.
Residential senior centers are managed by Directorate General for Promotion and Services of the Senior Undersecretary of the Ministry of Social Development, and aim to provide comprehensive care to adults over 60 who are domiciled in the City of Buenos Aires who lack sufficient assets and income for survival, social coverage, a family social network or social continent and are not suffering from mental or behavioral disorders that cause problems of social integration.
The Secretariat of the Third Age is responsible for No. 26 Promotion and Assistance Program for the Elderly and through this initiative, care homes, and homes for permanent residence and day homes.
The purpose of the audit, which was conducted between April and July 2010 and which was assessed in 2009, included the analysis of works and projects to be implemented in households dependent on the Secretariat for the Elderly. But the AGCBA reported that it was not possible to analyze the construction because they were not performed due to a lack of budget implementation.
The Social Infrastructure Fund (FOISO) is a special fund dedicated exclusively to finance projects and construction works set out in an annex to the Law No. 2570/08, which also gives life to FOISO, and within which are included those of the Secretariat for the Elderly. The Fund would be established with an amount of more than $ 1,600 million. This law also authorized the Executive Branch to conduct public credit operations aimed at integrating this line, by providing funds to FOISO.
The city government finally could not carry out any of the work provided for residential care for older adults "for not having received a response from the Ministry of Economy and Production of Argentina in relation to the application of debt" that would finance the FOISO.
However, auditors found that the construction works that were not executed in homes were reassigned to other programs in other areas of the Buenos Aires government with funding from the City Treasury. In this regard, the AGCBA notes that "these reallocations of funds observed an inconsistency regarding the source of funding," relating to the change of homes of the FOISO to the Treasury of the City.
Construction
The No. 26 program, which provides care to households of permanent residence, had a budget for works over $ 31 million.
While the program was not carried out due to lack of funding, the audit noted that it could not obtain "information relating to the existence of a Plan of Construction." In the description of the program there is "no information included that mentions the planning of new buildings financed by FOISO". And that is why the watchdog recommended the audited agency to "have a defined Work Plan and detailed at the time of the budget requirement" because the amounts "should be based on a work plan properly documented where costs have been previously evaluated."