“If you think I’m clientelist… I’m proud to have helped people”
For both requests, no home visit will be carried out. “If you have to make 20 or 30 visits per week, when you know that you also have to manage files, then you try to make your work a little easier, and then there are fewer controls.”explains a social worker to the VRT.
Pano’s investigation into fraud at the Anderlecht CPAS
Approximately two months after their request, the two applicants received an appointment for an interview. “I thought they would ask for a lot more things: account statements, proof that I really live where I say I live… But they didn’t ask for any of that.”comments Lina in the report.
While Arno justifies the impossibility of a home visit by the fact that there are great tensions within the family in which he lives, that it is not possible for people to enter the apartment … The CPAS contacted Arno again two months later regarding the need for a home visit. Arno refuses. The CPAS does not follow up.
And, four months later, Arno received a positive response from the CPAS. He receives his rights. Same for Lina. Neither applicant had their actual income investigated. Both received several thousand euros, reports the VRT. Who further specifies that, according to the testimonies of the social workers that they were able to collect, certain requests are accepted, when in reality they know that the people are not entitled to them. Mustapha Akouz CPAS Anderlecht
Questioned by the VRT, the president of the CPAS at the time Mustapha Akouz (PS) got slightly carried away. “I understand that this outrages some people in Flanders. But I’m a socialist, that’s it. And I’m proud to be one. I’m proud to help my neighbor. I can be blamed for that, but that’s how it is. was mandated for that And for the rest, if you consider that I am clientelistic… I am proud to have helped people.he declared emphatically.
