A young woman from Alicante who was rescued a year ago by the Fire Department thanks to a call from a relative denounced yesterday on social networks that she had received a bill of 211 euros for the service. After the ensuing commotion, the City Council, whose Department of Finance transferred the concept to collection, rectifies and announces that it will declare “exempt the payment of this service because it is about saving a life. Not all cases are the same”.
An automated bureaucracy, an artificial intelligence that lacks feelings, is to blame for this “error”, according to the Alicante town hall, although it follows from the fact that in this automatic collection system there is no discrimination in the cause that causes the rescue, none “human” instruction in this regard, something that must be corrected so that this type of event does not happen again.
The event happened in April 2022. The Emergency services received a call from a relative of a young woman who was going through a complicated situation. The firefighters and health services responded, the young woman was transferred to the Hospital and subjected to a stomach pump. Almost a year later, just as if what happened had been a false alarm, a prank or a broken lock, the City Council tried to collect the concept “rescue of person at home”: 211 euros.
In a thread on Twitter, the young woman asked: “If anyone knows how I can claim such barbarity, I appreciate any help; I remember how that day crying I verbalized my economic situation and they told me that it did not matter!!!”. And she added: “being poor seems to them to have nothing to do with wanting to die and becoming even more impoverished for such a thing.”
After the immediate reaction of numerous users of social networks, including municipal opposition politicians, such as the spokesperson for Compromís, Natxo Bellido, the City Council reacted. The official Twitter account ensures that today the formula will be sought to avoid paying the young woman.
It was not enough for this that the affected person complained directly to the Treasury, according to her account in the aforementioned thread, because they told her that she had to find “in the municipal ordinance, explicitly, that my case (care for risk of life itself) is exempt of fire fees, or otherwise pay. I can’t find it.”
The young woman herself ends up telling in her thread that, after the publication of the matter in a local media, the City Council contacted her, promising to close the file and modify the municipal ordinance “so that this does not happen again.” “I have let them know that the suffering of receiving such a letter has no name.” And after thanking everyone who has shown her solidarity, she concludes by stating “now I do… I need to rest, if I don’t respond it’s for that reason”.
