The President of Honduras, Xiomara Castro, has banned the use of public funds to help people who do not need it, in response to the controversy unleashed a few weeks ago when it became known that congressional deputies would receive an extra Christmas bonus of 100,000 lempiras (about 3,800 euros).
Castro said that despite «efforts» have been made with the «limited resources» available to the State, one can still see «women carrying their children, the elderly, and people with disabilities, asking for help» and therefore has ordered that public funds go to those who «need support and food».
«Because of this precariousness, and out of Christian solidarity I forbid the use of State funds for celebrations, gifts, bonuses, that are not directed to people who need support and food,» he has announced via Twitter.
In this sense, he has asked both his cabinet ministers and the rest of the country’s political leaders «to go to the corners of cities, neighborhoods and villages of extreme poverty, to share food, medicine and shelter, for those who demand» from them «the humanism» they preach.
Castro’s decision comes shortly after the uproar caused by the Christmas bonus that it was announced that congressional deputies would receive at a time of special economic difficulties in the country due to the international situation.
This bonus was even rejected by the president of Congress, Luis Redondo, although it was later learned this week that his personal assistant was in charge of delivering a check to each deputy, as confirmed by the spokesman of the Liberal Party bench, Mario Segura.
After some deputies have assured that they have rejected the check, the National Party has announced that it will file a complaint before the Attorney General’s Office for Congress to reveal who has accepted this bonus, considering it as a way to buy the will of the deputies at a time when the vote for the 2023 general budgets is at stake.
The checks were delivered last Friday and would have been accepted by the pro-government bench of the Libre Party and by some liberals, according to the Honduran newspaper ‘El Heraldo’. However, in view of the revelation caused, they would have backtracked and would not make use of it.
For its part, the governing partner of the Libre Party, the Salvador Party of Honduras, has clarified that this bonus is not such, but a subsidy, but they have committed themselves «not to take it».
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
