Mayors react to report revealing percentage of poor people in municipalities
- Yaritza Rivera Clemente, EL VOCERO / 11/19/2020
- https://www.elvocero.com/gobierno/pandemia-y-terremotos-exacerban-la-pobreza/article_9433bbd4-2a31-11eb-8e72-3bb3d5794d86.html
The emergency caused by the accelerated spread of the coronavirus (Covid-19), as well as the disaster caused by the earthquakes in the southwest and the slow recovery process after hurricanes Irma and María are factors that have led to an increase in poverty levels in the island's municipalities, mayors interviewed by EL VOCERO agreed yesterday.
The municipal executives also reacted to a report released by the Puerto Rico Institute of Statistics, which reveals that the percentage of people living in poverty levels reflects that in six municipalities between 60% and 64% of their population lives in impoverished conditions.
The geographic distribution shows that they are located in central and southwestern Puerto Rico, and these are Maricao, Guánica, Adjuntas, Lajas, Jayuya and Comerío, data obtained from the Selected Indicator Map Series -collected during the 2014-2018 period- through the Community Survey conducted by the federal Census Bureau.
In percentage terms, 37 municipalities in Puerto Rico have half of the population or more living below poverty levels. The municipalities with the lowest percentage of people in poverty are located in the metropolitan area, with the exception of San Juan and Cataño.
Difficult situation
The mayor of Guánica, Santos Seda, said that the "different situations of Hurricane Maria, the pandemic and the earthquakes in our municipality have put us in an extremely difficult situation and that is why as mayor I have presented a recovery plan, which harmonizes what is economic development, housing construction, among others, in order to lift our municipality".
He detailed that a total of 517 families lost their homes, while the municipal administration lost its facilities after the earthquakes earlier this year.
"Everything remains to be done. There is still the demolition of state government structures, there is still the disbursement of funds through the CDBG-DR (community development program to attend to disasters) for the waterfront, the Guanica seawall pumps, the town in Ensenada, which we are following up on because we have presented all these proposals during the past four years and this has been extremely slow," Seda lamented in an interview with this newspaper.
The mayor of Comerío, Josian Santiago, pointed out that this municipality has historically faced a situation of economic backwardness since the disappearance of the strongest economic activity that the municipality had, which was the tobacco industry in the 1960s.
"From then on, I have to admit that there has not been anything to replace that activity because of our topographic condition and particularly -in the case of Comerío- the development plan imposes that we have to conserve 93% of our territory as green areas. So we can develop in urban and project terms only 7% of our territory. This limits the development of economic activities that help raise the standard of living of families in terms of income and others," he explained.
Marcos Irizarry, mayor of Lajas, commented that 60% of the residents of this municipality are senior citizens who depend on social security and live alone.
"It is a town full of strong agricultural land, of great tourist development, we have all the factories open, unemployment is only 9.2%. In other words, I don't know the parameters they (Census) use, but it is a town that has had a low incidence of crime, agriculture and fishermen; in other words, many of the jobs are registered because they are sensitive areas," he said.