The Secretariat of the Public Function (SFP) keeps open 326 files against Servants of the Nation and their coordinators throughout the country for alleged irregularities committed between 2018 and 2021, according to official information.
The Servants of the Nation is a figure created by the current administration attached to the Secretariat of Welfare. It is an army of 19,000 civil servants throughout the country who serve beneficiaries of social programs and whose support costs 39% more budget than the last administration spent for salaries of officials of delegations of dependencies.
Faced with a request for transparency on the Servants of the Nation and their coordinators denounced before the Public Function between 2018 and 2021, the agency reported that it had opened 337 investigation files, but 11 had been archived for lack of elements. So 326 files were still in process.
However, he did not detail the reasons for the irregularities for which they were denounced. In addition, it is not only 326 people investigated, but cases. This is because in each file there could be more than one official denounced.
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In October 2020, the former Secretary of the Public Function, Irma Eréndira Sandoval, reported that up to that moment she had almost 100 files open for alleged irregularities committed by officials of the delegations of the Secretariat of Welfare.
“We are supervising what matters most to us and what concerns us most, which are social programs. Social programs are being monitored with a lot of discipline in the delegations,” he said in an appearance before the Chamber of Deputies. But until July 2021 there had been no resolution that determined responsibility in any of the cases, according to the agency’s request for information.
In that appearance, the former official also said that the previous government “generated waste” for the 2,300 delegations, subdelegations and representations of federal agencies that had one thousand 752 delegates and that meant the expenditure of 150 million pesos only in the payment of payroll. This is one thousand 800 million pesos in 12 months.
However, having the servers means spending 39% more budget on payroll. Well, according to the Superior Audit of the Federation, “for the payment to professional service providers for fees and personnel of an eventual nature, called “Servants of the Nation” in the year 2019 eroded a total amount of 2 thousand 965 million pesos”, according to the audit 240-DS.
The López Obrador government replaced the offices of ‘delegations’ of the federal dependencies with a ‘delegate of welfare programs’, the so-called ‘super delegates’ in the states, to be the link between the Federal and local administrations.
Although in theory the ‘super delegates’ have no bureaucratic structure, in practice, the Servants of the Nation are the officials in charge of the field operation of delivering programs in each state.
The Servants of the Nation began work before being officially recognized. They were in charge of carrying out the “Welfare Census” in which they located and registered beneficiaries of the direct delivery of money programs. Activity that they continued to do in the first year of the administration.
They also distribute the cards for the programs, attend the “integrating welfare centers”, which can be a local, an office in the municipalities or a chair and a table in the public squares. They are also part of the ‘road runner brigade’ for the application of vaccines against COVID-19.
That figure has been controversial by the parties opposed to Morena by pointing out that his work is proselytizing and promoting the government.
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