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- The municipal training proposes to start as quickly as possible with the execution of 7 of the measures included in the Plan, including having five new workers in Social Services, with training in energy consulting

- The Plan points out that there are 7,000 families in the municipality with high or very high risk of suffering from energy poverty and almost 11,000 at medium risk, figures that clearly show the CARM assistance managed by the City Council to be insufficient. 2018 only reached 150 families

NOW MURCIA denounces that the City Council is not applying the Municipal Plan against Energy Poverty, which was approved in April 2017. Councilman Miguel Angel Alzamora notes that the Plan included "43 specific measures to protect, as it was then announced, families they need the help of the Consistory more, however, these actions are not being carried out, while the situation in the municipality regarding the energy poverty of the families continues to be very serious ".

For this reason, now Murcia will take to the Plenary of January a motion that demands that "once and for all to begin implementing the Plan against Energy and Water Poverty of the City Council, proposing that it be started as quickly as possible with the execution of 7 of the measures included in the Plan ".

Alzamora recalls that when the Plan was announced in 2017 figures were offered on the problem of energy poverty in the municipality: "It was stated that there are some 29,000 families that could not heat their homes, as well as 7,000 families with high or very high risk of suffer energy poverty and almost 11,000 with medium risk ".

Despite these alarming figures, "the measures adopted by the regional and local governments," says the councilman, "are presented as very inadequate."

In this sense, it emphasizes that "Decree 154/2018, of June 27, which regulates the direct granting of subsidies to municipalities and associations of Social Services of the Region for the fight against energy poverty, has had an impact minimum in the municipality According to the information provided by the Department of Social Rights, in 2018, only 150 families have benefited from the subsidies of the aforementioned decree.

For its part, "the 2016 Housing Law of the Region, which includes measures against energy poverty, is not being applied." The Autonomous Community has not drawn up the protocol established by law, nor has it signed agreements or agreements of a voluntary- with the electric companies ".

"As if this were not enough," adds Alzamora, "in the 'Bases regulating aid for the rehabilitation of buildings and homes in the Region of Murcia 2018-2021', there is no proposal for any measure that takes into account poverty energy ".

Faced with this panorama, "it is of enormous importance that the City Council begins once and for all to implement the Municipal Plan against Energy and Water Poverty".

Among the actions that Murcia now considers most urgent, and that stands out in the agreement of the registered motion, are "to have in the next 3 months the professionals that the Plan establishes, namely, four social workers and one administrative assistant, and to train them in energy consultancy, initiate the procedures for the creation of an economic fund destined to the financing of integral reforms of housing of families without economic resources, as the Plan alludes, and to begin the formalities to formalize collaboration agreements with the supplying companies, for stop the cuts to the vulnerable population and propose broader agreements on the social bonus. "

In the agreement of the motion, the creation of two censuses contemplated in the Plan is also underlined, "one of the dwellings with energy deficiencies, and another one of vulnerable consumers and severe vulnerable consumers of the municipality".

Alzamora concludes that "the City of Murcia has to be firmly involved once in the serious problem of energy poverty in the municipality, which as reported Red Cross and EAPN, leads thousands of families in the municipality to have to choose between eating adequately or heat the house, in addition to having serious consequences on health and suppose a diminution in other fundamental rights ".

NOW MURCIA

Source: Ahora Murcia