Coronavirus. Shopping vouchers, the ranking of beneficiaries published on the site
Rabaiotti: “We try to reach the people affected by the emergency in the shortest time possible”
Milan, 21 April 2020 - There will be a total of 13.754 Milanese families who will be able to benefit from the shopping vouchers that the Municipality has decided to distribute to those who are in difficulty due to the Coronavirus emergency.
La list was published this morning on site of the municipality. The first block, made up of 13.475 families, will be financed immediately; in the next few days the Administration will evaluate another approximately 300 positions already admitted to the ranking.
All those who submitted an application by the deadline of 15 April (overall around 36 thousand people), both those admitted and those excluded due to lack of requirements, will receive a response email or text message from the office within a few hours. Administration. In the case of admission, instructions will be provided on how to proceed to activate the voucher.
“With this operation - intervenes the councilor for social and housing policies Gabriele Rabaiotti - we have tried to reach the people who the ongoing emergency has made more vulnerable, who have lost their jobs or in any case have suffered a heavy drop in income, and to do it as quickly as possible, aware of how much the crisis is weighing on us."
The total number of those admitted in the ranking, in possession of the requirements for access, numbers 15.370 families. But, at the end of the financing operations, around 1.600 will not be able to receive the voucher due to exhaustion of the funds: "For all of them - explains Rabaiotti - we are considering offering the possibility of receiving the food parcel via the Food Aid device based on the hubs already active".
As a method of disbursing the contribution, the beneficiaries were able to choose between the Soldo prepaid card and the Satispay app to download onto their smartphone.
Those who have opted for the latter tool will shortly receive a text message to credit the vouchers (if they are already Satispay users), or with instructions to activate the app with a link to download the application and a first code access to receive accreditation. The list of over 300 affiliated supermarkets and food outlets where you can do your shopping will be visible on the same app, as well as on the Municipality's website.
Those who have chosen the Soldo prepaid card, which works like a normal credit card, will receive it directly at home in the next few days from local police patrols and civil protection teams. Also in this case, the activation of the vouchers will take place by sending a text message with the card pin, which will be spendable in all supermarkets and food outlets that rely on the Mastercard circuit.
The expiration date for both prepaid cards and the app is set for November 30th, after which both tools will be deactivated.
The amount of the contribution amounts to 150 euros per month for two months if the beneficiary family does not exceed three members, and 350 euros per month for two months in the case of a larger family. Overall, the part of the state fund made available by the Administration for this measure amounts to over 5,848 million euros.
The beneficiaries of the contribution, as per the required requirements, are all families residing in Milan, with a single income or no income, who live in rent or pay a mortgage for their first home, with availability in their current account not exceeding 5 thousand euros on 31 March 2020 and who have a total family income of less than 20 thousand euros or 40 thousand if they had lost their job due to the emergency after 1 February 2020.
The Administration, given the high percentage of exclusions from the ranking, deems it necessary to make a further assessment with respect to a particular access requirement (that relating to the balance in the current account at 31 March 2020 being less than 5 thousand euros) which, in the compilation of the question, it may have been the cause of misunderstanding.
For this reason it will contact the families found to be excluded for this sole reason, also to check what other measures to adopt to support them.
Updated: 24/04/2020