Articles

This was revealed by an investigation into a program that the government of Puerto Rico promoted this four-year term.

Yesmin Valdivieso, Comptroller of Puerto Rico Yesmin Valdivieso, Comptroller of Puerto Rico. Metro PR February 9, 2023

A audit coordinated between the Office of the Comptroller of Puerto Rico and its counterpart in Argentina culminated in a special report on initiatives for sustainable development and the end of poverty in Puerto Rico that revealed the inactivity of bodies created by the government, to the point of not having used funds allocated for the fight against poverty.

This is an investigation led by the General Audit Office of the Nation of the Republic of Argentina. In coordination with auditors of the Office of the Comptroller, they evaluated the effectiveness in the approval, development and implementation of actions based on public policy to reduce poverty and child poverty in Puerto Rico, as established in Executive Order OE-2021-039, approved by the governor on May 25, 2021 and in Act 84-2021, Public Policy Act of Puerto Rico to Combat Child Poverty and Social Inequality, approved on December 31, 2021.

Although the commission was established by law, the necessary mechanisms to fulfill its objectives were not established, since the state and federal initiatives were not integrated with those of the municipal governments, the nonprofit entities and those of the private sector. In addition, the Commission had not prepared a strategic plan, nor a list of the funds available at the federal and state level, and the law also did not include methods of citizen participation, among others.

For fiscal year 2023, a budget of $1,200,000 had been approved to fund the Program against Child Poverty. However, as of January 20, 2023, these funds had not been used. This situation prevented measuring the progress to reduce child poverty.

With respect to the achievement of the goals to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the narrowing of the gender gap, the Report indicates that a campaign was implemented to promote the application for the child tax credit, but no additional actions to the public policy of reducing child poverty and poverty were established. As of October 6, 222,327 returns had been filed with the Federal Internal Revenue Service with the claim of the child tax credit. This represented 73% of the total families that qualified. “In the long term, the impact of these funds cannot be determined, since it is not a recurring aid,” the report reads.

The coordinated audit is carried out by different supreme audit institutions (SAIs or audit institutions), offers the necessary conditions to analyze different perspectives on the same topic and, at the same time, presents a panorama of how the topic is treated at the national or regional level.

Poverty, according to the UN, is the condition characterized by a severe deprivation of basic human needs, such as access to food, drinking water, health services, housing, education and information.

The Office of the Comptroller of Puerto Rico received an invitation from the Argentina General Audit Office to participate in a coordinated audit on the implementation of the goals of the Sustainable Development Goal, End of Poverty (Goal 1), and the mitigation of the impact of COVID-19, with emphasis on the narrowing of the gender gaps.

The Special Report lists the federal and state programs, and their purpose to mitigate poverty by Government agency. In addition, it details the amount of the various laws and programs of the Government to address the COVID-19 pandemic such as the CARES Act, CRTRA Act and the ARPA Act, among others.