The municipality prioritized spending millions of pesos to fund festivals, to the detriment of public health
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The radical administration of La Falda owes two months' salaries to the anesthesiologist staff of the municipal hospital, which is why all surgeries and births are being referred to the Domingo Funes hospital in the city of Santa María de Punilla.
However, the municipality prioritized spending more than 100 million pesos to fund festivals and shows in the city during the summer season, instead of settling the debt with its healthcare employees.
A distressing health situation is currently being experienced in the Punilla city of La Falda, due to the municipal financial mismanagement of the current radical administration of Javier Dieminger.
It happens that in the city's hospital, all surgeries and births are interrupted due to a salary debt with the anesthesiologists, which is why the operating rooms are not functioning.
El hospital municipal de La Falda.
While this conflict remains unsolved, all operations and births (both natural and by cesarean) are being referred to the Domingo Funes hospital (also in a state of assistance crisis, with termination of contracts for professionals and staff) in the city of Santa María de Punilla.
A consultation with Doctor Lucas Viotto (conducted by a renowned pediatrician from La Falda and published in a post on his personal Facebook account) confirmed the closure of the Obstetrics Service of the Municipal Hospital, which is considered a significant setback in terms of assistance capacity for the city's residents, especially those with limited resources and without social security coverage or prepaid company affiliations.
In this scenario, the city's radical mayor has subtly tried to disassociate himself from any responsibility for his administration, maintaining that the provision of the municipal hospital's obstetrics service has not ceased, but that this is only a temporary situation until the debt with the anesthesiologist staff can be settled.
However, this statement by Dieminger completely differs from what was expressed by Doctor Lucas Viotto, director of the municipal hospital, who indeed confirmed the closure of the Obstetrics Service of said hospital. It is in this shameful context that the radical mayor intends to literally request an economic bailout from the provincial government.
However, the numbers seemed to add up for Dieminger before the start of the summer season, as the municipality did not hesitate to incur a million-dollar expense to finance a cycle of musical shows, hiring artists with high fees (such as La Bersuit Vergarabat, Los Tekis, Cruzando el Charco, or La Barra), as well as technical expenses (for lights, sound, screens, barriers, stage structures, etc.) with a high rate for their services.
Despite this irresponsible decision to finance an excessive expense with municipal resources, the desired effect of artificially stimulating the local economy to generate income and reactivate the city's various commercial sectors was not achieved, as official hotel occupancy figures show that it was not a positive summer season, as local merchants expected, due to the lack of proposals and attractions inherent to the city.
To reflect this act of total fiscal irresponsibility by the radical Javier Dieminger, this medium was able to obtain some captures of decrees from the Municipal Executive Power, obtained from the city's January Official Gazette, where the operations to finance the hiring of various artists and technical expenses within the framework of the well-known cycle of musical shows called "La Falda under the stars" are detailed.
From only this information obtained, a sum of around 160 million pesos can be verified to finance this festival, without considering the subsequent expenses specified in the February Official Gazette (which is not yet published as of today).
Decretos del Poder Ejecutivo Municipal.
As can be seen in these images extracted directly from the January Official Gazette of La Falda (the only one available this year), the radical administration decided to prioritize the use of million-dollar public funds for the financing of artists and the corresponding logistics service for the festival's structure.
Decretos del Poder Ejecutivo Municipal.
Instead of efficiently using that money (for example, to pay the salaries of the local hospital's anesthesiologists), Javier Dieminger decided to prioritize the financing of a festival that promised to boost the city's economy and would consequently imply more income to the public coffers in terms of taxes and municipal fees, a situation that did not materialize due to the weak summer season that La Falda experienced, according to the testimony of the residents.
Decretos del Poder Ejecutivo Municipal.
It is worth noting that, according to what was declared by Doctor Lucas Viotto, covering the cost of each cesarean has a budget of between $700,000 to $1,000,000, which raises the question of how many future mothers could have brought their children into the world in the city of La Falda if it weren't for Javier Dieminger's pressing intention to dance to the rhythm of the carnival brought by Los Tekis. It is also questionable that the municipal government assumed other roles that are typically private: namely, the Cruzando el Charco show was the only one not held free of charge, but required a ticket purchase, and there is no information on the accounting of those ticket sales.
Decretos del Poder Ejecutivo Municipal.
Perhaps the mayor should consider, next time, reviewing a bit of the discography of the artists he will finance with public funds, because he might find reflections in some of their songs that would facilitate the task of making real decisions in favor of the inhabitants of the city he governs: I thank you because here I am, you are my only mother, with soul and life today I venerate your garden... (La Bersuit Vergarabat – Madre hay una sola).
