The discussion in the Parliamentary Committee on Audit about the problems identified in the management of benefits by the Deputy Ministry of Social Welfare brought to the surface a very unpleasant reality regarding the strengthening of the welfare state, and the government machine failing to serve effectively those in greatest need. The weaknesses recorded by the Audit Service in presenting its reports are a particularly worrying matter. The problem, however, is that the state continues to ask vulnerable citizens to wander from service to service, to collect documents that it should itself be able to secure electronically, and to wait for months for the examination of applications that often concern their very survival.
The government and the Deputy Ministry of Welfare invoke understaffing, the complexity of the cases and the reforms that are under way. These are explanations that have a basis, but they cannot constantly be turned into an alibi. The lack of staff did not appear suddenly. The weaknesses of the information systems are not a phenomenon of yesterday. And the need to interconnect state services has been discussed for years without a definitive solution being given.
Even more worrying is the fact that the weight of the malfunctions is ultimately transferred to the weakest. To people who depend on the Minimum Guaranteed Income, to low-income pensioners, to single-parent families and to citizens facing serious social and economic difficulties. For them, a delay of months literally raises a question of their survival.
The welfare state is not measured by the sums written in the budgets, nor by the press releases issued by the competent ministries. It is measured by its effectiveness. By how quickly help reaches the beneficiary. By whether public resources are protected without the citizen being humiliated within a labyrinth of bureaucracy.
The discussion in Parliament should function as a warning bell and not as yet another parliamentary procedure that will be forgotten with the passing of the days. Cypriot society and the citizen have had enough of promises of planned reforms. They need results. And these are judged in practice, there where the citizen asks the state for help and cannot wait indefinitely until the public administration solves its own problems.
Because a welfare state that struggles to reach the people who need it most risks losing its very reason for existing.
