For the first time in 80 years, a woman holds a seat on the Board of Directors of the Institute of Social Welfare (IPS). Mirtha Arias, representing the workers' sector, took office replacing Víctor Insfrán Dietrich and promises a management focused on human and gender perspectives.
With 38 years of service at the Municipality of Asunción and former president of the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT), Arias requested unpaid leave from the city hall to dedicate herself fully to social welfare. She knows the system as a policyholder and patient companion.
After visiting the Central Hospital, Arias said she was moved by the situation of mothers with children hospitalized in intensive care. “I have seen the IPS shelter, the desperation of mothers due to the lack of medicines, and sometimes not even a plate of food. I want to be like a godmother to the shelters,” she stated.
The board member also promised to review the bureaucratic barriers that delay benefits. “There are people who, due to two or three days of employer delay, do not receive maternity leave, or injured workers are left without coverage. We need to optimize this so that the IPS truly serves the worker,” she declared.
Arias distinguished the current challenges from those faced by predecessors. According to her, the previous period focused on the administrative area because the IPS had “astronomical and catastrophic” debts. Now, it is time to rebuild basic management and daily services. She criticized the long lines at the Central Hospital, where elderly people wander lost, and proposed a personnel reengineering to offer personalized and guided care.
Among the proposals are the modernization of the call center and the renewal of appointment channels to end the suffering of policyholders when scheduling consultations. The medical area, she acknowledged, is the most critical point and will require greater technical control.
The new board member recalled that the only real source of IPS funding is contributing workers. She advocated for the use of technology and data cross-referencing with other state agencies to monitor whether companies declare all employees and contribute correctly.
Finally, she made an appeal to the working youth to demand formal employment and value social security, as a way to sustain and improve the public health system.