On 30 September, Raquel Sosa, director of the Coordinating Agency of Welfare Universities, informed workers at the Centre for Regional Cooperation for Adult Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (Crefal), via an email that they were not he would pay his fortnight because the person in charge of administration had resigned and a new official was expected to be cleared to dispose of the resources.
Nine days later, employees remain uncollected and accuse that Crefal’s resources are being earmarked for the 100 Welfare Universities, one of the main projects of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, despite the fact that Crefal is a body outside the federal government administration.
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Through a letter to the Secretary of Education, Esteban Moctezuma, they accuse that since December 2018, when the president announced that Crefal would be in charge of the Welfare Universities, the institution has operated “without legal framework to regulate it”.
They note that the institution is “without its own direction, as the Agency’s human, financial and material resources have been allocated to the Universities’ programme, which has left us in a state of helplessness and without financial resources to meet the such as the payment of wages to their workers from the second half of September.”
Nearly a hundred members of the Executive Committee of the Crefal Workers Coalition have held assemblies since 8 October and decided to send that letter as the only resources to be heard.
@EMBAJADAHN_MX @Guate_Mex @ElSalvador_MX-EmbaVenMexico @EmbajadaEcuMEX @EmbaCuMex @Chile_en_Mexico @ARGenMexico @BrasilnoMexico As members of the Board of Directors, the following communication is sent to them by CREFAL workers. pic.twitter.com/eGEP1DMOh1
— CREFAL Official (@CREFAL_Oficial) October 8, 2019
Animal Político sought out Raquel Sosa and the SEP to know their position on the matter, but in both cases they ignored the request.
Workers also warn that although they have been withheld from tax contributions, IMSS, FONACOT and INFONAVIT, the agency’s administration has therefore not paid them these institutions “have already required payment and have even administrative enforcement procedures to seal Crefal’s assets.”
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Last December, President López Obrador announced that the universities would be coordinated by Raquel Sosa through crefal, although this is an international body that does not belong to the federal government, as it was created through the Cooperation Convention 12 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean in 1951.
Despite this, Raquel Sosa took the direction of Crefal, even before the end of the period of the previous director, Sergio Cárdenas, planned until 2020.
In addition, the agency was not subject to transparency obligations and some agreement had to be made with the PMI in order to be able to hand over the 1 billion programme pesos that were labelled in the unit, but did not occur.
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In the following months, the President decreed the creation of the Coordinating Agency of the Universities for Welfare Benito Juárez García on July 30, so the Crefal would no longer be in charge of this program.
In August, Raquel Sosa left the crefal leadership to head the new Agency. Since then, the international body has been without direction. The appointment should be made to the Board of Directors, composed of the 12 ambassadors of the member countries and chaired by the Secretary of Education in turn.
Although Sosa no longer belongs to the Crefal, she sent the email to the employees, in her capacity as director of the Agency on 30 September.
The workers also asked Secretary Moctezuma to the Governing Body that chairs “defining the clear and precise rules that will govern Crefal’s interaction with the coordinating agency since December 2018, workers have carried out functions indistinctly between such institutions without legal framework to regulate it.”
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