Manizales has a good quality of life, but you have to think about mental health and the elderly.

Photo | File | MOTHERLAND

The study is carried out by Manizales Cómo Vamos. The guests will be the director of DANE and the president of SUMA.

LISET ESPINOSA

COUNTRY | MANIZALES

Manizales Cómo Vamos will present today (8:00) the 2022 Quality of Life Report, which analyzes the state of the city across 12 indicators. Daniel Hurtado, director of Manizales Cómo Vamos, believes that the capital of Caldas generally has a good quality of life and for the first time they will include data on migrants in the territory.

However, it is demographically confirmed that more and more “we are an aging city. Definitely, we should pay a lot of attention to this, because there are more elderly people than children under the age of 15. This makes us have different types. Other An important aspect is the recognition that the presence of foreigners in the municipality, let’s call them in this case Venezuelans, Spaniards or representatives of another nationality, played an important role, since we are talking about 13,000 people who somehow entered the local economy, and perhaps this also has some positive impact. This is a fact that we have never explored and is worth discussing,” Hurtado said.

Likewise, suicide continues to be a mental health issue nationally and compared to 2021, rates have declined in Manizales, allowing it to leave the top three it has been in in recent years as the capital city with a higher number of cases. . “In 2022, we are no longer in the same place, because in other parts of the country the phenomenon has worsened. This data also includes the rate of suicide attempts, and for every suicide that occurred in Manizales, there were at least 17 attempts in the city. In other words, you need to pay attention to the problem, because not every attempt ends in suicide, but it breeds that the discussion about mental health needs to be put on the table,” he said.

Hurtado stressed that the minimum education level achieved by the population aged 25 and over is positive, as it is important for the city to check “how in 11 or 12 years Manizales was able to easily raise the minimum level of education achieved by 10 percentage points. population in higher education. This is a very important trace of the educational efforts that have been made. It also puts a number of issues before the table, namely: the higher the level of education achieved, the higher quality of employment is expected to be created in order to keep the population in the city. This is a very interesting task, and above all because the labor market in Manizales is very positive, especially in terms of formalities.”