Exseremi Paula Labra at the request of the Comptroller’s Office: “Every peso was used to save the lives of millions of Chileans”

The former seremi of Metropolitan Health and current candidate for deputy for the provinces of Linares and Cauquenes, Paula Labra (independent RN), clarified the request made by the Comptroller General of the Republic (CGR) on various irregularities in expenses of the dependency during his administration.
On August 17, the comptroller made a series of requirements for the accreditation of expenses for 538 million pesos to the metropolitan seremi, at that time under the administration of Paula Labra.
In this regard, Paula Labra said that “every peso of the Metropolitan Health Seremi was used to save the lives of millions of Chileans, where we have faced the worst pandemic in the world in a hundred years. More than 5,000 civil servants work in the service who have done a tremendous job and the figures prove it. That is why I regret that it is tarnished by this type of situation.”
According to what was indicated from the environment of Labra, the response was emanated from the seremi on September 29, through an ordinary signed by the current regional ministerial secretary, Helga Balich, in which the requested documents were delivered to the Comptroller’s Office, with the justified expenses that accredit “the validation of the services provided as well as the relevance of the payment to said suppliers”, which consists mainly of transport and lodging services related to the various sanitary measures adopted in the framework of the pandemic.
Asked why the Seremi de Salud Metropolitana did not respond to the request within 30 days, Labra said that “our team was mainly focused on the pandemic and this type of requirements by the CGR is one more among many others, within its supervisory role. The times are extremely limited and especially in pandemic it becomes even more complex. The important thing is that the answer has already been issued along with the vouchers that show that everything is in order and regularized as appropriate.”
Labra also called on the rest of the candidates to make a clean campaign and not to unfounded. “That’s part of the old politics that already has the citizenry boring. For my part, I will continue touring the eleven communes of Maule Sur, disseminating my proposals to be a deputy and be the first woman in the area to reach the Lower House in its entire history, thanks to the support of the people who multiply day by day, “he concluded.
It should be remembered that Labra was criticized by the president of the Association of Officials of the Seremi Salud RM (ANFUSEREMI), Marcia Lara, of “undoubted abandonment of duties” regarding the “control of the acquisitions of goods and services in the Seremi Salud RM, which yielded regrettable results.” “Do we think it is an inexplicable ethical detachment, that a designated authority leaves in this financial disorder an administration of the State? What allows our society to accept without question that political bosses leave their positions, leaving an institution plagued by irregularities, to go for another “prey”?” wrote Lara in a column published in El Ciudadano.
Paula Labra is a commercial engineer from the Universidad del Desarrollo and in the public sector she served as an advisor in the Seremi of Economics in the Bío Bío, head of Administration and Finance in the Seremi of Metropolitan Health, national director of the Commission of Preventive Medicine (Compin) and seremi of Metropolitan Health.

Original source in Spanish