Servers ask that Ipea president and minister be investigated

The Ipea (Institute for Applied Economic Research) employees’ union sent the Regional Attorney’s Office a request on Monday (29) to investigate possible abusive practices committed by the president of the organ, Erick Alencar Figueiredo, and by the Minister of Citizenship, Ronaldo Bento.

The complaint refers to a study signed by Figueiredo, in which he contests recent research that points to an increase in the number of Brazilians experiencing food insecurity or hunger. The work was presented by the president of the institute during an interview with journalists with minister Ronaldo Bento, in Planalto, on the 17th.

For Afipea (a national union and association of civil servants of the agency), the note signed by the president of Ipea “flatly disrespects the standardized internal protocols for the publication of studies and
surveys conducted by the house servers.”

IPEA said it would not comment and the Ministry of Citizenship did not respond.

Such as Sheet showed, studies conducted by Ipea researchers are usually discussed internally before publication, in a content validation stage, a procedure that would not have occurred with the study by Figueiredo.

“It should be noted that the dissemination and publication of research at Ipea is conditioned, as a rule, to discussion, evaluation and prior approval by peers, and its main purpose is to preserve the quality and rigor of the published works”, says the entity. of servers in the complaint forwarded on Monday.

The association also states in the document that a press conference to disclose the data violates an internal booklet of Ipea, which contains recommendations for conduct for the electoral period.

“The use of the institution for the subliminal production of government propaganda in a closed period constitutes an explicit abuse of political power, and must be restrained by the competent electoral authorities”, says the entity.

One of Ipea’s president’s arguments is that the increase in hunger should have resulted in a “significant shock” in the increase in hospitalizations for diseases resulting from hunger and malnutrition, in addition to a greater number of low birth weight children.

In another excerpt from the 20-page text, the president of the agency says that, “if the data released are really correct and food insecurity has grown, it does not seem to impact the health indicators of the Brazilian population directly related to malnutrition.”

He attributes this hypothetical lack of impact to existing social programs. “In this aspect, it is worth mentioning the progress that the Auxílio Brasil Program has represented, expanding the number of beneficiary families in all regions of the country and increasing the purchasing power of the benefit in terms of basic food baskets”, he says.

The conclusions were disputed by researchers, who consider the premises of the study to be wrong. One of the data used by Figueiredo was the number of hospitalizations due to poor diet. This indicator is flawed, according to scholars, because malnutrition is not always the first diagnosis on admission to hospitals, and because it ignores the cumulative effect of lack of food on health.

Data from this Ipea study have been used by Jair Bolsonaro (PL) in his reelection campaign. The president has said at least twice that there is no “real” hunger in Brazil.

Figueiredo’s study was criticized by the executive coordination of the Penssan Network, author of one of the indicators refuted by the president of Ipea, the 2nd National Survey on Food Insecurity in the Context of the Covid-19 Pandemic in Brazil, carried out by the Penssan Network (Rede Brasileira Research on Food and Nutrition Sovereignty and Security).

Executed by the Vox Populi Institute, the Penssan survey shows that 33 million people are hungry in Brazil today, more than 30 years ago.

Figueiredo was also co-author of a study released in November 2020 predicting that the chance of a second wave of Covid would be very low, which ended up being contradicted by the growth of coronavirus contagion. At the time of the study, the country registered around 140 new cases per day, per million inhabitants; six months later, at the height of the second wave, there were more than 250 new cases a day.