The Attorney General of the Nation, Daisy White Hair, referred this Thursday to the investigations of the control body against the alleged breaches of regional leaders with the School Feeding Program (PAE).
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As he indicated, there are currently “more than 180 disciplinary investigations for alleged breaches of the governors and mayors in the commitments with the PAE ”.
The head of the Public Ministry stressed that there is special surveillance on this program, which will continue next year, and stressed that the Attorney General’s Office has a Special Committee and the respective Regional Committees.
“We monitor the delivery of food rations throughout the national territory, which allows us to identify the alleged quality-related irregularities, the coverage and the timely provision of the program, ”said Cabello.
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As a result of this management and in view of the suspensions of delivery of food rations, the Procurator highlighted that “protection actions were filed against the departmental administrations of the Cesar, Magdalena, Quindío and Nariño, in order to ensure the fundamental rights to a balanced diet, health and education of the student beneficiaries of the PAE who were affected ”.
Attorney Margarita Cabello.
In a complementary way, the Attorney General’s Office has insisted on the importance of sufficiently financing the PAE to guarantee food throughout the school calendar. For this reason, he asked the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit to prioritize the co-financing of the PAE for the 2022 term.
Likewise, it announced that the Certified Territorial Entities were required to carry out in a timely and diligent manner the actions that guarantee the provision of the school food service in the period 2022, from the beginning of the school calendar and without interruptions.
“The Office of the Attorney General of the Nation it will ensure that access to the right to education becomes a reality again for the nearly 2 million children who this year could not return to the presence, “said Cabello.
He asked to work to bridge gaps
The Attorney General’s intervention took place during the discussion ‘Education as a guarantee of the Human rights‘, developed by the Organization of Ibero-American States at the Universidad del Atlántico, and which had the special presence of the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize Rigoberta Menchú.
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One of Cabello’s initial messages was the need to bridge existing gaps and improve the quality of education for all.
“The Attorney General’s Office is vigilant in the face of the situation of all Colombian students, and we act so that the authorities fulfill their duty to guarantee real access to their right to education, and for the full return to their educational institutions in dignified and safe conditions. “, said.
The senior official indicated that “as has been pointed out by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), inequalities in the right to education start from an early age. Many children in poor households never go to school, do not start their studies on time or attend lower-quality institutions ”.
He also highlighted that “with the arrival of the pandemic, those responsible for educational policies and society as a whole saw their capacity to act deeply limited ”, recalling that last September the Dane released the results of the Multidimensional Poverty Index (IPM), which assesses the conditions of childhood and youth.
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The school absence indicator for 2020 showed “an increase of 13.7 percentage points (at the national level), going from 2.7% in 2019 to 16.4% in 2020”.
The Attorney General’s Office recognized the importance of promoting the face-to-face return to classes progressive and safe, accompanied by the improvement of connectivity and of course in decent food conditions.
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PAE: Prosecutor’s Office conducts more than 180 investigations against leaders