The Generalitat de Catalunya has decreed today, after the meeting of the Consell Executiu, the free telephone number for citizen attention 012 within a maximum period of one year and the end of the mandatory nature of the prior appointment. Both measures, they have explained from the Government, are part of the new model of citizen attention of the administration, which will also include video attention.
Until now (and still in the coming weeks or months, because there is still no implementation date for the measure), citizens who called 012 had to pay between 0.43 and 0.83 euros (VAT included) per call, according to the operator of the user. The idea of ??the Generalitat is to assume this cost so that 012 becomes a free telephone. However, the spokesperson for the Government, Patrícia Plaja, has not specified a date from which the service will become free of charge for the user, but has limited herself to remarking that the Government has set a maximum of one year to carry it out.
In this sense, he has detailed that the Catalan administration will carry out an information campaign when the time comes to inform the public and informed that the cost for the Generalitat of assuming the service could be around 1.2 million euros.
Asked if the 061 health care telephone would follow the same path as 012, Plaja has argued that while the latter is “exclusive competence of the Government”, the same is not true of the former. “061 is the exclusive competence of the State. We have demanded that it be free through various channels and on several occasions. But they do not contemplate it.” She has recalled that for a period of time (the state of alarm due to the covid pandemic) this number became free, but that it was “impossible” for it to maintain that free service a posteriori.
Framed in the new model of citizen attention, the Government has also decreed the obligatory elimination of the prior appointment to be attended in the different estates dependent on the Catalan administration. Plaja has argued that it is a measure that aims to “overcome the digital divide that still exists” and that it is the result of “active listening to what citizens were demanding, the demands of different associations and also the recommendations of the Ombudsman for Greuges”.
The spokeswoman has stressed that, despite the measure, “there continues to be the possibility of booking an appointment” for those who wish to do so and that it can even be requested by physically going to the administration.
Likewise, it has announced the creation of integrated citizen attention offices in each of the Veguerias where users “will be able to carry out any type of procedure” related to the Catalan administration.
The agreement is one more step to achieve the objectives established by the Digital Administration Decree, which requires paying special attention to citizen assistance. The decree is also committed to articulating a digital administration that allows the empowerment of people, the democratization of technological solutions and the most appropriate attention to social demands.
