The Ombudsman Esther Giménez-Salinas and her deputy, Jaume Saura, presented yesterday the new report of the Ombudsman in which he concludes that the Catalan Administration is not ready for a Catalonia with eight million inhabitants.
According to the report, delays in responses to citizens and the lack of coverage of social needs are the main reasons for this conclusion. Likewise, and for the first time, the document analyzes the Administration’s capacity to respond to citizens.
The impoverishment of the population, due to the effects of the 2008 crisis and the pandemic, or the aging of the inhabitants, accompanied by an increase in waiting lists, are some of the main social transformations that Catalonia has suffered in recent years. And recently concern about climate change has been added.
In this sense, the document denounces how the Administration has not adapted to new social needs. Response times continue to be “excessively long” in areas such as healthcare and coverage of certain public policies is “insufficient”, according to the report. A good example is the waiting list for surgical interventions in which there were more people in October 2023 than in 2017.
Last year, more than 17,500 people went to the Ombudsman and 21,938 actions were initiated, among which complaints, queries and ex officio actions stood out. Social policies, especially regarding education, social services and health, represented 43.8% of the total complaints. This clearly points to “the difficulty that public administrations have in responding adequately to the social needs of the population,” according to the report.
In this sense, it must be taken into account that the growth of the Catalan population, two million people since 2000, the majority of them immigrants, has caused an increase in healthcare pressure on public services.
Finally, the Ombudsman made ten recommendations to transform the administration into an integrated social services model and make it much more efficient, effective and friendly. The initiatives include an alternative model to the institutionalization of dependent people, menas and children; offer comprehensive care in the field of health and a national strategy that consolidates a reception system for the immigrant population, and finally, planning to improve educational success, the promotion of a social housing stock and a pact against climate change .
