Federal program illegally forces residents to pay for works – 01/29/2023 – Power

Poor families living in isolated communities in the semi-arid region of Minas Gerais had to pay to benefit from the federal government’s Cistern Program, whose budget already included all related expenses.

The contract, worth BRL 15 million, provided for the installation of 3,012 cisterns in five municipalities covered by an agreement signed between the Inframinas Consortium, which brings together city halls in the region, and the then Ministry of Citizenship, still during the government of Jair Bolsonaro (PL ).

Based on the agreement, a non-profit private entity based in Alagoas, Ceapa (Central das Associações de Agricultura Familiar), was hired to carry out the works. The agreement, however, did not foresee a contribution from the beneficiary families, since they live in a situation of social vulnerability.

Deceived, residents told the report that they had to borrow money to pay for part of the construction of the cisterns — social technology that stores rainwater for consumption.

Some withdrew from participating in the program because of financial difficulties.

After questioning the report last week, the ministry, renamed Integration and Regional Development with the inauguration of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on the 1st, informed that, given the seriousness of the case, it would suspend the entity responsible for the collection.

Ceapa’s management told the Sheet which demanded compensation from the residents because it initially considered that the city halls would bear part of the cost of the works. As there was no such contribution, she said, she was forced to ask the beneficiaries to participate.

After questioning, he said he started to reimburse the beneficiaries.

Among the residents who had to assume the costs is the couple Eva Pereira Silva, 54, and Antônio Aguimar da Silva, 60, from Vertente, one of the isolated communities of Coração de Jesus (450 km from Belo Horizonte), a municipality contemplated by the agreement .

They stopped investing R$870 that they borrowed from the bank in planting grass and preparing the soil, with a view to raising animals, in order to access the Cistern Program.

The money ended up being used to buy five meters of washed sand and to hire a mason’s helper who could dig a hole in the ground —the space for which will be used to accommodate the 16,000-liter cistern.

This was the condition established by the representatives of the agreement for the families to enter the program.

In addition to buying sand and, in some cases, supplementing the material with a few bags of cement, the families had to work as helpers for the mason hired by the company and provide him with food.

Anyone who was unable to perform the service, due to age or health, had to pay a servant.

To save time and money, the Silvas ended up taking the hoe and helping to finish the excavation. When the report from Sheet he was at their house, last November, it was almost four months since they had bought the sand and little more than a month since they had dug the hole.

However, until the publication of this report, the cistern had not been built and part of the sand had already disappeared with the rain.

The report heard ten more families in isolated communities in Coração de Jesus and São João da Lagoa. All confirmed the counterpart charge.

Among the families heard there are those who have already dug the hole and are waiting for the cisterns, those who borrowed money to cover expenses and residents who were unable to contribute with the counterpart and were excluded from the program.

“Only the freight to bring the sand here costs R$400, and each meter of sand costs R$150. How are you going to pay for four and a half meters of sand? It’s too expensive. Then I said: let’s give up”, lamented resident José Antônio Pereira da Silva, 27, who lives with his wife and three young children in the Mocambo 2 community, in Coração de Jesus.

Only R$ 200 would be deposited in the account of the beneficiary families to cover the cost of food. The counterpart was announced in meetings that took place in the communities.

According to residents of Coração de Jesus, these meetings took place between mid-July and September, in the presence of the mayor, Robson Adalberto Mota Dias (PL), Robinho Dias, and his brother, Ronaldo Soares Mota Dias, who was once mayor of São João da Lagoa and Coração de Jesus and is executive secretary of the Inframinas Consortium. Another brother, Carlos Alberto Mota Dias (PL), is now mayor of São João da Lagoa.

The Ministry of Citizenship was responsible for almost the entirety of the agreement, worth R$ 15 million. In the Mais Brasil system, of the federal government, it appears that R$ 12.6 million of this amount has already been disbursed.

The agreement is one of 11 disclosed in a notice of justification for waiver of bidding published by the Ministry of Citizenship in 2021. Of these, only six went ahead.

The waiver of public competition was justified by the condition of extreme poverty of the public served by the program. According to the justification announcement itself, 647,000 rural families do not have any adequate means of access to water in the semi-arid region.

City halls and municipal consortia that signed the agreements were responsible for contracting the entities that would build the cisterns.

This hiring should take place through a public call (a procedure carried out by the public authorities to carry out projects in partnership with NGOs or non-profit private entities).

Only entities accredited by the Ministry of Citizenship could apply. There are at least 151 accredited entities, 10 of which are in Minas Gerais.

The term of the service provision contract, signed by Inframinas, says that Ceapa should “make available the physical, human and material resources necessary to guarantee the perfect execution of the services”, among other attributions. At no point does the contract say that the beneficiary public must contribute financially.

According to Márcia Muniz, a member of the Advisory Service for Rural Popular Organizations —an organization that has participated in the Cistern Program in Bahia since the 2000s—, families should not assume any expense in this type of action.

In communities in the interior of Minas Gerais, residents heard by the report did not participate in any selection to obtain the benefit.

Those who attended the meetings with Ceapa representatives found out informally through WhatsApp groups or through a neighbor. Those who have already received the cisterns said that they did not undergo training to properly use the water.

In a hearing that took place in November at the Câmara de Coração de Jesus, councilor Gleisson Ferreira Leite (Patriota) commented that he was approached by approximately 20 families who were struggling to pay the amount required by the entity.

“When I saw the plaque on the cistern, it said Água Para Todos, Federal Government, Pátria Beloved Brazil. But what is this ‘Pátria Beloved Brazil’ that the person has to pay half of?”, commented the councilor.

José Romildo da Silva Soares, one of the residents interviewed by the report, said: “At the first meeting, they said they had to pay. At the second, people asked why. Their justification was that in the Northeast, where they are used to building these boxes, the sand is washed and in Minas there isn’t”.

After the report visited the site and discussed the case at the City Council of Coração de Jesus, Ceapa gathered residents of some communities and promised to reimburse the required compensation. Residents said they received BRL 700 – which already includes the BRL 200 promised to pay for the mason’s food. The amount, however, does not cover all the expenses that the families had.

Ceapa sent to Sheet in the last week nine proofs of reimbursement.

OTHER SIDE

questioned by SheetCeapa, contracted to build the cisterns in Minas, said that the amount transferred by the federal government was low and had to resort to the city halls of the benefited locations to carry out the works.

“It was agreed that the municipalities would help defray the expenses mentioned, in view of the huge increase in materials. As the municipalities did not help, the entity identified the error and corrected it in time, passing on what was owed to each family, thus remedying inconsistency”, said the entity to the report.

Ceapa’s management sent proof of compensation for the amount of BRL 700 paid to nine beneficiaries, a report on the training for water management that took place in the community of Esporas and five lists of training workshops.

Ceapa states that in each of the municipalities served, commissions were formed with representatives of the public power, City Council, church and farmers to select families from the list of the Single Registry for Social Programs, CadÚnico.

The organization said it has not yet been notified of the ministry’s decision to suspend the contract.

The Ministry of Regional Integration stated that the charge was illegal and that the entity will be suspended and may be disqualified, according to the rules of this type of federal agreement.

The current management also attributed the disbursement of resources to the previous government, even in the face of the finding of irregular collection last year.

So far, 590 16,000-liter plate cisterns have been delivered, which represents 19.6% of the total target of 3,012 cisterns set out in the work plan.

Former minister of the Bolsonaro administration Ronaldo Vieira Bento said that the ministry made an evaluation of the contracts involving the Cistern Program and that the report pointed out irregularities only in contracts signed in previous governments.

“We had been doing constant monitoring precisely because of the problems that came from back there”, he reported. Bento said last week that he had no details regarding the agreement signed in Minas Gerais.

The Inframinas Consortium stated that no charge should have been made to the families and that it became aware of the “alleged irregularities” during a technical visit by members of the ministry last October.

The institution claims that its members did not participate in the meetings in which the charges took place.

Inframinas argues that it complied with all the requirements of the legislation regarding the publication of the notice, but that Ceapa was the only one that showed interest in participating in the event.

Mayor Robson Adalberto Mota Dias, from Coração de Jesus, said that the city hall’s only responsibility under the agreement was to organize community meetings with families registered in CadÚnico.

The warnings came through the presidents of residents’ associations and health agents. The selection criteria, however, would be the responsibility of the executing entity, in this case, Ceapa.

“I can’t say if the contract provides for compensation. What I was told is that the program was like that. [o recurso] had come to the city hall to execute, I would have known”, he said.

The mayor of São João da Lagoa, Carlos Alberto Mota Dias, also stated that there was no agreement for the city hall to enter with its own resources in the agreement. The only competence of the municipality was to mobilize rural communities.

_{The report was produced in partnership with Google from collections of documents published in the Pinpoint tool}