Hundreds of employees from twelve sports federations in the country have gone unpaid for three to four months, and amid the confinement due to the coronavirus, their families are surviving as best they can, said Edwin Loyola, president of the Azuay Federation, to EL UNIVERSO. In addition, the board member is upset because an employee from the Secretariat of Sports raised false expectations by sending an audio message, through a social network, announcing that the transfer for payments was going to take place last Tuesday.
Loyola's annoyance, he said, came about because on March 30th, the Secretary of Sports, Andrea Sotomayor, sent him a document informing him about the money for the payment of salaries, but the details of the letter were leaked.
"The official Rolando Parra sent an audio message to some trainers from the Federation and people became restless because they already had that money. That caused a problem for everyone, and it turns out that up to today there is no money," explained the board member the previous Friday.
'There were preferences'
Furthermore, according to Loyola, the fact that the salaries were paid to only 50% of the federations and not to the rest, at least "is strange," since as he said, there are entities that submitted their Annual Operational Planning to the Secretariat of Sports before others and were overlooked.
"Just to give one example, Cañar submitted the documentation for payment after other provinces and they already got paid. Could it be because the Undersecretary of Sports is Israel Verdugo, who is originally from Cañar?" he wondered.
"That's why I filed a letter with the Ombudsman's Office denouncing the violation of rights due to inequality of conditions. Why were some federations paid and others not?" he added.
"We had to take matters into our own hands, with the support of the Municipality of Cuenca and the Prefecture of Azuay, and we managed to deliver a food basket to the 240 employees of the Federation, including those of the subsidiaries. In addition, we managed to pay, also with our own management, the employees of Fedeazuay for the month of January," he said.
Patience to ask Sotomayor to manage payment from the Ministry of Economy and Finance has run out, said Loyola, which is why he turned to the Ombudsman's Office and the Ministry of Labor.
"I know that one of these institutions is going to help us because it is a humanitarian issue in favor of the workers. There are many human dramas like that of the treasurer who has cancer and cannot buy medicine," he said.
Unpaid provinces
Backed by documents, Loyola reported that in addition to the employees of Azuay, those from Cotopaxi, Loja, Morona Santiago, Carchi, Bolivar, Los Ríos, Orellana, Santa Elena, Santo Domingo los Tsáchilas and Tungurahua have not received their salaries.
"There have been problems in the Federation regarding employee salaries, and all they are doing is demanding their rights. Their families depend solely on that income and each day the situation becomes more difficult for them," said Lissette Antes, president of the Loja institution.
The resources have not been transferred to Galapagos either, and some trainers were last paid in September 2019. But that federation is under the intervention of the Secretariat of Sports, due to issues with leaders of the island, a source reported. (D)
$1.7
million annually
That is the amount of money that the Azuay Sports Federation receives from the Secretariat of Sports, a sum that does not cover their needs, said President Edwin Loyola.
The people from Fedeazuay are desperate in their homes. They must be locked up because of the emergency, but they don't have a dollar to feed themselves,"
Edwin Loyola, President of the Azuay Sports Federation.