The National Government approved the implementation of the transition program towards Citizen Income, which will be focused on households in extreme poverty. According to the administration of President Gustavo Petro, this aid is “one of the measures that Colombia requires to be a world power of life“.
The Citizen Income will seek guarantee an income of up to $500,000 per month to more than 2.9 million Sisben IV homes and to 113,000 homes in indigenous communities. Of all of them, that would be more than 3 million homes,”more than 1.6 million are classified in the groups equivalent to extreme poverty and around 1.2 million households in moderate poverty“.
• To define the amounts of the transfer to households, the entity will take into account the classification given by the Sisben IV survey, family conformation, the indigenous population, victims of forced displacement (registered with Sisben IV) and the territorial location of the families.
The first payment of the program is scheduled for April 2023 and they will continue every two months, that is, it would be recorded again in June, August, October and December, and so on.
“This will allow the most vulnerable families in the country to receive income above the poverty line, sufficient to combat hunger, progressively achieve economic autonomy and access to the enjoyment of fundamental rights.“, the government explained.
“It is a non-assistance bet on benefits for the population that needs it most and that is in a state of vulnerability and extreme poverty. The spirit of the Citizen Income is to be a system that makes it possible to dignify this type of benefits and aid, to the extent that it involves income that is above the poverty line, something that had not been done historically, since There is this transfer system in Colombia”, he explained Cielo Rusinque, the General Director of Social Prosperity (DPS).
Citizen Income Subsidy.
Other program details
To function, the Citizen Income “will use the base of households registered in the calls made by the DPS for conditional programs in 2021 and 2022, and the indigenous families that until December 2022 received conditional cash transfers“.
Although the program is national, the largest amounts will go to homes located in 466 municipalities of the country with high and very high prevalence of child malnutrition, municipalities with the highest multidimensional poverty index and PDET municipalities (Development Programs with Territorial Focus).
“Also, it seeks to privilege mothers who are heads of households with children under 6 years of age.“, was explained.
Along the same lines, the money that each household will receive will be given by the Sisben IV survey, family conformation, the indigenous population, the victims of forced displacement (registered with Sisben IV) and the territorial location of the families.
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