Overview of Complaints Received
The National Human Rights Council has reported the receipt of a total of 136 complaints from citizens who claim they have been unable to benefit from direct social support programs. These individuals attribute their exclusion to the reliance on indicators that they believe fail to accurately or fairly reflect the circumstances of many families living in social vulnerability. In its annual report released today, the Council highlighted that these indicators often become exclusionary factors, depriving certain groups of financial aid that the government has allocated for their benefit. The complainants have urged the Council to intervene with relevant authorities to reassess the criteria used to determine beneficiaries and address this issue.
Challenges in the Direct Social Support Program
The report emphasizes that the direct social support initiative faces numerous challenges, primarily concerning targeting. This program marks the first comprehensive attempt to employ a precise system for identifying eligible groups, aiming to rectify the shortcomings identified in evaluations of previous support programs, such as the compensation fund and other social initiatives. However, the Council noted that the process of identifying beneficiaries continues to encounter difficulties, which could potentially reproduce the same issues that characterized these earlier programs, as reflected in the complaints regarding the exclusion of families from receiving support. Furthermore, some cases have revealed illegal benefits due to inaccuracies in the data provided to the administration, juxtaposed against the denial of social support or mandatory health coverage to other families due to an overestimation of their social status.
The Council also pointed out that several families have been excluded due to delays in registering in the national population registry and the unified social registry, which stem from various reasons, including a lack of information or failure to complete required administrative procedures, as well as not having a postal or bank account. Additionally, the report highlights a challenge related to inclusivity, clarifying that achieving this goal necessitates protecting beneficiaries from fluctuations linked to the technical processing of the indicators used to evaluate individuals' social situations and assets, without accounting for the differences in living costs across various regions. These discrepancies can sometimes result in the denial of direct social support or registration in the mandatory health coverage system due to an inflated assessment of their living standards.
Moreover, the report notes that certain components of this initiative, particularly the health coverage program, have only reached approximately 86 percent of the targeted individuals, leaving nearly 8.5 million people still outside the mandatory health coverage system. The Council also touched upon the sustainability challenge, which manifests on two interconnected levels: the first relates to maintaining the purchasing power of direct social support, while the second concerns ensuring continuous funding for this project across its various components as stipulated in the framework law. The report stresses that failure to revise the support amount in light of declining purchasing power among beneficiaries due to rising inflation rates could lead to the support being primarily directed toward immediate consumption, rather than enabling beneficiaries to invest in education or seek job opportunities that could improve their social and economic conditions. The support amount, starting at 500 dirhams, was set before 2021, at a time when inflation rates during the period from 2021 to 2024 reached 1.4%, 6.6%, 6.1%, and 1.7%, respectively, which the Council deems significantly high compared to historical levels in Morocco.
Consequently, the report concludes that the real value of direct social support has diminished from its initial establishment, as no adjustments have been made to the amounts granted to families to account for inflationary effects. This situation underscores the necessity of maintaining a balance between the costs borne by the state budget and the contributions made by beneficiaries.
As reported by assabah.ma.
