Agreement to forgive the electricity bill debt for thousands of vulnerable families

BarcelonaThe Government and the Third Sector Table approved this Wednesday the forgiveness of the debt for electricity bills that vulnerable families have accumulated between 2022 and 2025. The measure is part of the expired agreement signed with Endesa in March 2021, and will mean that thousands of families will not have to pay unpaid bills, without risk of being reported. On the eve of the approval of the Generalitat's budgets, Salvador Illa and the president of the Table, Xavier Trabado, have formalized the agreement between both parties to allocate 250 million euros to strengthen social policies, from the fight against energy poverty to the promotion of employment, the fight against homelessness or child poverty.

Reference Index for Social Benefits (IRSCThis is the first time that the Table has obtained a commitment from the Government for social actions involving up to six different departments. Furthermore, the periodic updating of theReference Index for Social Benefits (IRSC, the reference from which social benefits are calculated, has also been achieved, to recover the purchasing power lost during the years it has been frozen. The increase in the IRSC depended until now on political will and budgetary availability.

After the signing, the Minister of Social Rights and Inclusion, Mònica Martínez Bravo, pointed out that, with this measure, the budgets they will approve tomorrow are "the most social in the history of Catalonia". For his part, Trabado celebrated the initiative, although he warned that the social needs of the country "are very high" and that there are "worrying indicators in many areas", reports the ACN.