2024-02-01 04:41:00
Popular Libraries have been around for more than 150 years in our country. The Protective Commission of Popular Libraries (CONABIP) was created by President Domingo Faustino Sarmiento in 1870. Sarmiento already foresaw then that libraries, due to the service they provide and their recipients, cannot be financed with their own funds, because they will be insufficient.
In 1986, when Law 23351 was passed, it created the Special Fund for Popular Libraries, which is integrated with 5% of the emergency tax on prizes paid in games of chance. Since 2006, CONABIP also participates in funds from the National Budget.
On December 31, 2022, the deadline provided for in Law 27432 for the integration of the aforementioned Fund would have expired and it would not have had the expected income. Law 27702, passed on 11/16/22, prevented the expiration of the term and extended it until December 2027.
The Special Fund, during the year 2023, meant the sum of $859,820,823, to be distributed among the more than 1,500 libraries in the country, a figure that is evidently insignificant with respect to the National Budget and the savings that its suppression is intended to achieve.
Popular Libraries registered as non-profit civil associations and with the documentation in order, receive subsidies annually for Current Expenses, purchase of books at 50% at each national Book Fair, payment of internet expenses and institutional strengthening. During 2023, this represented a total of approximately 62,000,000 who entered the different Rio Negro libraries registered according to current regulations for these concepts.
The libraries also receive subsidies from the Government of the Province of Río Negro and in some cases, such as in Allen, a citizen contribution granted by municipal ordinance, but the figures are significantly smaller.
Libraries offer members and users, from childhood to senior life, the possibility of engaging in recreational reading, research, participation in courses, workshops, reading clubs and an enormous diversity of activities linked to culture that would disappear without financing.
Dear legislators of Río Negro, the Popular Libraries are at risk of defunding and dissolution, from the group of provincial libraries we ask you to save them by voting to support CONABIP and the special funds that it has awarded by current legislation.
By the Federation of Popular Libraries of Río Negro
Sylvia Esther Osorio
18817292 – President
María Teresa Seghezzo 10123253 – Treasurer
1706765198
#Popular #libraries #defended
