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Yemen Red Cross worker dies amid safety worries

The Geneva-based Red Cross said on Tuesday that one of its volunteers was killed in Yemen, adding that it could not fly in desperately-needed aid due to a lack of security.

Published: 31 March 2015 15:15 CEST

Yemen Red Cross worker dies amid safety worries

Photo: The Local

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) called for the removal of obstacles to aid delivery and for humanitarian workers be allowed to work safely in Yemen, as Arab warplanes pounded the country for a sixth day.

It said Yemeni Red Crescent volunteer Omar Ali Hassam had been shot dead on Monday in the southern province of Al Dhalea while evacuating wounded people.

The ICRC said it had a plane stocked with medical supplies to treat up to 1,000 people that had been due to arrive in the country Tuesday but efforts to negotiate its safe arrival had so far failed.

The supplies were "for distribution to hospitals across the country that are running low on the means to treat the war wounded" after a week of deadly clashes and air strikes.

"There are casualties across the country," said Cedric Schweizer, who heads an ICRC team of 300 people in Yemen.

"There have been air strikes in the north, west and south, and clashes between opposing Yemeni armed groups in the centre and south, that are putting immense strain on already weak medical services," Schweizer said.

"In order that the wounded get the treatment they deserve, it's essential we deliver urgent medicines and surgical kits," he added.

An ICRC surgical team was due to arrive shortly in the southern city of Aden, which has suffered the biggest casualties so far, the organization said.

A Saudi-led Arab coalition has been conducting air strikes against Huthi rebels in Yemen since Thursday.

It has vowed to keep up the raids until the Iran-backed rebels abandon their insurrection against President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, who has fled to Riyadh.

ICRC's statement came a day after an air strike killed dozens of people and injured some 200 at a camp for displaced people in northwest Yemen, according to aid workers.

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Spain's basic income scheme hits backlog dead-end

Red Cross volunteers bring food packages to elderly and low income people. Photo: Cesar Manso/AFP

The measure was a pledge made by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's leftwing coalition government, which took office in January, bringing together his Socialist party with far-left Podemos as the junior partner.

The scheme — approved in late May — aims to guarantee an income of 462 euros ($546) per month for an adult living alone, while for families, there would be an additional 139 euros per person, whether adult or child, up to a monthly maximum of 1,015 euros per home. It is expected to cost state coffers three billion euros ($3.5 billion) a year.

The government decided to bring forward the launch of the programme because of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has hit Spain hard and devastated its economy, causing queues at food banks to swell.

Of the 750,000 applications which were filed since June 15 when the government started accepting requests, 143,000 — or 19 percent — have been analysed and 80,000 were approved, according to a social security statement issued on August 20.

'Months of waiting'

But Spain main civil servant's union, CSIF, paints a darker picture. “Nearly 99 percent of requests have not been processed,” a union spokesman, Jose Manuel Molina, told AFP.

The social security ministry has only really analysed 6,000 applications while 74,000 households that already receive financial aid were awarded the basic income automatically, he added.

For hundreds of thousands of other households, the wait is stressful. Marta Sanchez, a 42-year-old mother of two from the southern city of Seville, said she applied for the scheme on June 26 but has heard nothing since.

“That is two months of waiting already, when in theory this was a measure that was taken so no one ends up in the streets,” she added.

Sanchez lost her call centre job during Spain's virus lockdown while her husband lost his job as a driver. The couple has had to turn to the Red Cross for the first time for food.

“Thank God my mother and sister pay our water and electricity bills,” she said, adding their landlord, a relative, has turned a blind eye to the unpaid rent.

'Rushed everything'

A spokeswoman for the ministry acknowledged that the rhythm “was perhaps a bit slower than expected” but she said the government was working to “automate many procedures” so processing times should become faster from now on.

“The launch of a benefit is always difficult … and this situation is not an exception,” she added.

But Molina said this was a new situation, that was made worse by years of budget cuts to the public service which has lost 25 percent of its staff over the past decade.

“The problem is that they rushed everything, did it without training and a huge lack of staff,” he added.

The social security branch charged with the basic income scheme has only 1,500 civil servants, who also process most pension applications, Molina said.

These officials are facing an “avalanche” of requests, which already match the number of pension requests received in an entire year, he added.

About 500 temporary workers have been recruited as reinforcements but their assistance is limited because they do not have the status of civil servant, so they cannot officially approve requests for financial aid.

Demand is expected to increase. The government has said the measure was expected to benefit some 850,000 homes, affecting a total of 2.3 million people — 30 percent of whom were minors.

When the scheme was launched the government said all it would take is a simple online form, but this is a problem for many low-income families without computers and internet access, especially since the waiting time for an in-person meeting to apply is about two months, according to the CSIF union

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