The winners of the regional elections decide on your welfare services

What are regional elections about?

Responsibility for organizing social and health services and rescue services will move to welfare areas at the beginning of 2023. South Karelia forms one welfare area.

The regional council decides on matters of the welfare area. Its members, 59 regional councilors, will be elected in January in regional elections.

The current South Karelia social and health district Eksote and South Karelia the rescue service will cease to exist at the end of next year and the new welfare area will start operations in January 2023.

— Eksoten and rescue workers will move to the welfare area at that time for service, says the development and employment coordinator of the city of Imatra Circus Sarlomo.

He is Imatra's representative in the preparation of the South Karelia welfare region in the institution.

What changes?

On a practical level, nothing will change immediately: health centers, for the elderly treatment, mental health services and all other Eksote and rescue services services will remain unchanged for the time being.

On the other hand, a lot of changes are happening in the background.

—Until now, Imatra has had people elected by the Imatra city council representatives in Eksote's decision-making bodies. In the future, these municipalities there are no elected representatives anymore, but decisions are made by regional councilors and regional government, Sarlomo says.

The matters under the city's decision-making power and the available money are reduced, when the city no longer finances social security services. For example, to vitality, matters related to zoning and teaching are decided still in Imatra, and the city is still responsible for their financing.

What do regional councilors decide?

According to the law, everyone must be guaranteed equal and high-quality social services health services. It is up to you to decide how the services are implemented in practice regional council.

Since there is limited money, the regional councilors have to decide the rest for example, which services are organized as local services and in which matters e.g. digitalization is being developed.

—For example, the future of Honkaharju and the what will you get from there in the future, the chairman of the Imatra city council Anna Helminen says.

— The most important question is how to secure the services as a whole in the area of ​​the welfare zone, thinks the chairman of the city board Ilkka Nokelainen.

Why should you be interested?

The representatives of the regional council must run the welfare area in the council The best. At the same time, however, they also belong to their own municipality and residential area representatives.

— It is really important that the council has as many representatives as possible from a wide area from different parts of South Karelia. Each representative has its own an expert in their area, and for example they know about the people of Imatra the people from Imatra are the best, says Nokelainen.

—The local perspective is important, reminds Helminen.

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