The CES calls for an "active response" and individualized plans

The CES considers it essential to establish concrete objectives and set time periods to give a minimum certainty to the victims and warns about the risk that "the supervening poverty" that the catastrophe may cause will become permanent.

Two weeks after the eruption began, the CES expresses its concern at the first signs of the processes and procedures that have been put in place to direct and manage the response of the institutions to overcome the damage caused by the natural disaster. These procedures based on the «bureaucratic-administrative model», in which «people have to adapt to the formal procedures established by the different administrations, procedures that are, in themselves, incapable of facing the diversity of individual situations», he warns .

Given this, the advisory body on economic and social matters of the regional government claims to overcome this type of traditional procedures and move towards a management model centered on people. "We advocate the primacy of individuals, both physical and legal, over bureaucratic procedures, so that they are the center of processes and procedures, and where administrative structures have to adjust to individual diversity," says the CES in his pronouncement on the catastrophe of La Palma.

The CES considers it "essential" to establish a temporary framework of actions, which allows the victims to have the necessary certainty about the overcoming and exit of their current situation, so that the deadlines in receiving aid are not extended as It has occurred in other natural tragedies, as well as the plans that are going to be put in place to repair the losses caused by the eruption.

In the business sphere, “prior knowledge of the existing realities is considered necessary to reactivate, in the short term, economic activities, injecting the necessary liquidity and stimulating internal demand. Along with this, it is necessary, in the workplace, to have specific labor protection mechanisms, avoiding the destruction of jobs.

It is also worrisome that this situation turns into situations of supervening poverty, as a consequence of the losses suffered, and they turn into situations of permanent poverty. "For this reason, it is essential and a priority to generate basic protection mechanisms," adds the CES.

One million from the Fecam

The executive body of the Canarian Federation of Municipalities (Fecam) has approved the proposal of the 14 municipalities of La Palma, backed by the 88 Canarian municipalities, to donate one million euros of their own funds to the construction of houses for the hundreds of families affected by the volcano.

The agreement reached on Friday afternoon "is a demonstration of solidarity and unity of the Canarian municipal government, in the face of a catastrophe that leaves hundreds of families homeless." "It is now, in the face of events of this magnitude and in the face of imperative needs, when municipalities must join forces to seek real solutions to the problems of our neighbors," according to the statement issued by the governing body of the Canarian Federation of Municipalities (Fecam ).