Ombudsman calls for united front against high cost of living.
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 39 minutes ago
- 3 min read
By THE STAR STAFF
The fleeting window of peace between La Fortaleza and the island Legislature cannot be wasted on political pleasantries, said Puerto Rico’s ombudsman, Edwin García Feliciano, who has issued an ultimatum demanding that the government form an aggressive, unbreakable united front to force the Financial Oversight and Management Board to open its eyes to the economic devastation tearing Puerto Rican families apart.
The high cost of living is no longer a burden; it is a chokehold,” García Feliciano said. “Those sectors that earn the least and have to perform extraordinary feats to survive are being strangled by the high cost of living, an issue that the government must bring to the board’s attention without delay.”
The ombudsman insisted that the government cannot wait another day to drag the oversight board to the negotiation table.
García Feliciano ripped into what he said was the board’s clinical detachment, blasting them for hiding behind cold spreadsheets and sterile statistics while remaining completely indifferent to the human suffering of marginalized communities.
“We cannot be complicit in the poverty in which many families live, nor in the looming reality that many senior citizens will confront in the face of this threat,” García Feliciano said, stressing the struggles so many in Puerto Rico face trying to stretch a family budget across survival basics like health, education and the safety of their children.
He demanded that the Legislature and the executive branch stop playing defense and force the oversight board to look at the wreckage they are causing before “this powder keg of social instability explodes … given the severe blow to family finances and the cost of basic necessities.”
“There are no magic solutions to address these issues, but there are ways to do so by prioritizing and implementing them in stages,” García Feliciano said.
To make matters worse, he said, citizens are trapped under punishing, fixed-charge increases on electricity bills that were cruelly rubber-stamped by the oversight board. The ombudsman called it a direct assault on the wallets of every consumer, particularly the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority retirees who are being forced to pay into their pensions all over again.
Therefore García Feliciano demanded to know why the government is hoarding the pension reserve created by Law 53-2021. While intended for Pay-Go obligations, the public is currently bleeding cash to pay for the failures of a corrupt public corporation, he said.
The insults to the workforce, the ombudsman said, continue with the public sector’s Classification and Compensation plans, which he asserted have turned into a complete disaster. Employees who protested their pathetic salary adjustments have been met with months of radio silence, some agencies haven’t even bothered to draft their plans, and a mountain of cases sits rotting before the Appeals Commission, García Feliciano said. He demanded that the oversight board understand and agree to release funds to increase the government’s health plan contribution for most public employees to a dignified level beyond the paltry $125 where it remains frozen.
García Feliciano also slammed what he considers the “absolute lawlessness and total lack of accountability” for the negligent agency heads who bankrupted the Retirement System by ignoring their fiduciary responsibility in their role as employers. Today, because the island government contributes absolutely nothing under Law 106, he said, workers are forced to retire “into poverty with insulting, microscopic pensions.”
“Puerto Ricans are trapped in a vice grip of scarce and overpriced medical care, skyrocketing food and fuel costs, predatory tolls, and stagnant, pathetic wages,” he said.
The ombudsman declared that “the Legislature and the executive branch must work together to ensure the oversight board carefully addresses these concerns and defends our people.”