The governor of Chubut, Ignacio “Nacho” Torres, led this Saturday morning, in the auditorium of the Ministry of Education, a summary of the main policies implemented during his first six months in office, placing special emphasis on each of the lines. priorities of his government.
Accompanied by a large part of his cabinet, Torres highlighted the “intense work and commitment” of each of the areas throughout these six months, and assured that “each of the officials of this government is available twenty-four hours a day.” of the day to solve people’s problems.”
Furthermore, in his assessment, the provincial president highlighted that “we had to take office at a time of political, institutional, economic and financial uncertainty,” and even so “in less than six years we managed to remove Chubut from the last positions in the ranking of institutional transparency.” ” to become “first in terms of financial administration and fiscal responsibility.”
At the same time, Torres also highlighted having been able to recover essential services such as education, security and health in a province “that had not started classes on time and in a timely manner for 10 years and that had the lowest teacher salary in the province.” Argentina”, as well as “an obsolete security system and a health system on the brink of collapse.”
EDUCATION, SAFETY AND HEALTH
At the beginning of the press conference, the coordinating Secretary of the Cabinet, Guillermo Almirón, took the floor, explaining that telling “where we come from, what has been done in these months and what the future perspective is” is part of “a new model of governance that the governor entrusted to us” and that has to do with “being accountable to the people of Chubut in a clear and permanent way.”
In this sense, Almirón added that “from the beginning of the administration our governor marked education, security and health as priority axes”, and then gave way to the private presentations of each of the holders of the government portfolios. .
In turn, the Minister of Education, José Luis Punta, explained the situation in which the province’s educational system was when he took office, recalling that “the governor himself defined the state that the province was going through as an educational catastrophe.”
In this regard, the minister highlighted that “in the last six years Chubut had only been able to complete 180 days of class, and we also had the lowest teacher salary in the country and more than 200 schools without minimum building conditions for teaching.”
Next, Punta detailed all the policies and programs that the provincial government deployed during the first six months with the aim of reversing the situation and recovering education in the province, highlighting first of all that “we were able to guarantee the start of classes on time. and shape after more than ten years.”
Likewise, he added that “teacher salaries were sharply increased” and “we implemented the most ambitious literacy plan the province has ever had,” which contemplates “the training of 4,000 teachers and the arrival of 275,000 books to each school in Chubut.” , to ensure that “children learn to read and write in the first two years of primary school.”
Finally, the head of the educational portfolio stressed that “after more than six years we were able to open new schools in our province, and we implemented the School Infrastructure Incident System that allows us to know what building problems schools have and work to solve them.” , all of this with the ultimate goal of “reaching 190 effective days of classes; achieve 100% literacy among students, recover the school and improve educational quality.”
In turn, the Minister of Security and Justice, Héctor Iturrioz, also mentioned the security crisis that Chubut was experiencing, and explained that “the goals that we initially set had to be short and possible” to meet the urgent demand. that the people of Chubut required.
“Thanks to the governor’s efforts, we were able to form the Unified Security Command,” said Iturrioz, adding that “there had never been a unified preventive command in the history of the country.”
The minister also said that “we delivered technology elements to the police, inaugurated the Monitoring Center in Playa Unión and improved the operation of the Provincial Road Safety Agency,” also working on key regulations to improve and accelerate processes related to safety. and justice such as “the Security Emergency law, the Asset Forfeiture law and the reform of the Criminal Procedure Code.”
At the end of his participation, Iturrioz spoke about the provincial government’s projections regarding his portfolio and mentioned the creation of the Judicial Pole, new police stations, the creation of the Provincial Penitentiary System and new detention centers.
For his part, the Secretary of Health, Sergio Wisky, also mentioned some milestones of the government’s management in these first months in which he highlighted “the incorporation of 15 ambulances, the entry of 116 doctors, especially on the plateau; and the investment of 6 billion pesos in works and maintenance to begin putting the Trelew Hospital into operation.”
In addition, Wisky explained that from his portfolio they work every day to “rebuild trust for a cultural change in health workers,” and assured that “this implies a change in values, a paradigm and being able to improve the work environment that “It results in better care for patients and also in better conditions for workers.”
“Our goal is to be able to achieve an integrated, modern and people-centered provincial health system,” concluded the head of the Chubut health portfolio.
MODERNIZE THE STATE
At the closing of the conference, Torres also explained the challenges of his management for the future, stating that: “the main objective for the second semester is to modernize the State to integrate Chubut.”
In this sense, the president highlighted that “we are going to concentrate on having energy, connectivity, telemedicine and education, above all, to connect and bring our people closer together.”
Torres also assured that they plan to continue improving citizens’ access to state procedures: “We plan to develop a single window so that every Chubut resident with their cell phone can access in an easy and friendly way a system that offers an immediate response. ”.
Likewise, the governor referred to “giving the new generations tools for their future and for them to learn trades, but also programming, which is the key to the future.”
Ending his speech, the head of the Chubut Executive said that what is coming is also “the search for new investments and continuing to work on promotion policies for industry and tourism.”
OTHER KEY AREAS
In another section of the presentations it was the turn of the Minister of Production, Digna Hernando, who listed various savings policies undertaken by her portfolio, and stated that “25 hierarchical positions were eliminated that represent a saving of more than 238 million pesos.” .
Hernando continued by saying that “we promoted the promotion law for the naval industry, essential to enhance this activity in Chubut and generate jobs” and “after 28 years we began dredging the port of Comodoro Rivadavia.”
Continuing with his speech, Hernando stressed that “we did an exhaustive survey of all the industrial parks in the province in which we found many irregularities and which allowed us to start working to improve them.”
The official also commented on the policies of her portfolio that serve the agriculture and livestock sectors and said that “we created a program for the regional supply of vegetables,” adding that “we accompany the private sector in the production and marketing of wine, beekeeping, fruit products, among others.”
For his part, the Minister of Tourism and Protected Areas, Diego Lapenna, thanked the governor for his trust and “for telling us from the first day that we had to work in this sector to put the tourism industry in Chubut back in the place it was. deserves.”
Later, Lapenna began to recount the most predominant actions in this first semester of management, pointing out that “we signed an agreement with the European Union for the Mares Project, this is really important, taking into account that one of the axes of government is to advance towards sustainable and preservation tourism.”
The minister also highlighted that “we achieved a lot of infrastructure, signage and connectivity works for the protected natural areas”, at the same time that he highlighted “that after a long time Chubut once again hosted important events” such as being the headquarters “of the Federal Council of Tourism and also of the 49th Congress of the Argentine Federation of Travel Agencies.”
Finally, the provincial head of Tourism said that “the governor entrusted us to work hard to promote tourism investment and to generate commercial conditions” and added: “I have no doubt that in these 6 months Chubut is already back in the spotlight.” of national and international tourism.
ACCOMPANIMENT
Together with Governor Torres, the Minister of Government, Andrés Meiszner, presented; the Minister of Economy, Facundo Ball; the Minister of Production, Digna Hernando; the Minister of Security and Justice, Héctor Iturrioz; the Minister of Tourism and Protected Areas, Diego Lapenna; the Minister of Education, José Luis Punta; the Secretary of Health, Sergio Wisky; and the coordinating Secretary of the Cabinet, Guillermo Almirón.
In addition, the Secretary General of the Government, Guillermo Aranda, was also present; the Secretary of Infrastructure and Planning, Nicolás Cittadini; the Secretary of Labor, Nicolás Zárate; the Secretary of Science and Technology, Guillermo Defossé; the controller of ISSyS, Rodrigo San Martín; the general manager of Lottery, Ramiro Ibarra; the state prosecutor, Andrés Giacomone; the mayor of Trelew, Gerardo Merino; the mayor of Rawson, Damián Biss; the mayor of Esquel, Matías Tacetta; the mayor of Gaiman, Dario James; the senior staff of the Chubut Police; provincial deputies, cabinet officials and the media.
