2023: Proactive and determined Royal action in favor of strengthening the Welfare State

Rabat, December 26 (MAP) Driven by a proactive and determined will and a deep and unshakeable faith in the need to ensure the conditions for a dignified and decent life for all sections of society, King Mohammed VI has, since his accession to the Throne of his Ancestors, worked to strengthen the welfare state and promote balanced, inclusive and sustainable development.

The year 2023 was no exception, with the launch of several projects and programmes designed to improve citizens’ access to basic health services, strengthen their ability to access decent housing and consolidate family cohesion, thereby ensuring greater social justice and equity.

The King has never ceased to multiply his initiatives and magnanimous gestures with a view to democratising access to healthcare as part of a policy of proximity, improving the health of people with special needs, the elderly or those suffering from chronic illnesses, and ensuring the Kingdom’s health sovereignty.

These initiatives and actions were bolstered by the inauguration on 28 April of the Mohammed VI University Hospital Centre in Tangier, a medical centre of excellence which, thanks to its Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy, will help to structure healthcare provision in the Tangier-Tétouan-Al Hoceima region, attract new medical skills and offer cutting-edge training to new generations of professionals.

The same month also saw the inauguration of the Psycho-social Rehabilitation Centre at the Ibn Rochd University Hospital in Casablanca and a Mohammed V Foundation for Solidarity Local Medical Centre in the new town of Errahma in the Dar Bouaaza district of Casablanca. These two solidarity projects demonstrate the central role that His Majesty the King attaches to strengthening basic health services and bringing them closer to the public.

These projects are complemented by a program to deploy connected mobile medical units, designed to improve access to medical services for people living in rural areas. This pilot program is part of the Royal project to reform the health system and generalise social protection, and represents a new intervention model combining local care and telemedicine.

As part of the drive to improve people’s access to decent housing, a new housing assistance program has been introduced for the period 2024-2028. It aims to renew the approach to helping people to buy their own home, and to help households increase their purchasing power by providing direct financial assistance to home buyers. Moroccans living in Morocco or abroad who are not homeowners in Morocco and who have never received housing assistance are eligible.

In social terms, this new program will facilitate access to housing for low-income social classes and the middle class, reduce the housing deficit and speed up completion of the “Cities Without Slums” program. Added to this is the direct social assistance program, which, thanks to its direct impact on the targeted families, will raise their standard of living, combat poverty and insecurity and, ultimately, improve social and human development indicators.

The Head of Government, Aziz Akhannouch, said that around one million families – the equivalent of 3.5 million Moroccans – meeting the eligibility threshold of the Unified Social Register will benefit from the first installment of direct social assistance from 28 December.

Furthermore, as the family is the basic unit of society, King Mohammed VI has always been “keen to protect” this institution, by initiating major projects and reforms in its favor and ensuring that favorable conditions are created to strengthen its cohesion.

This is the background to the letter sent by the Sovereign to the Head of Government to initiate the revision of the Family Code (the Moudawana), inspired by national values that place the family and family ties within the sphere of the sacred.

Aware of the relationship between social development and economic growth, His Majesty the King has always taken a particular interest in promoting the industrial sector, which is seen as an essential lever and catalyst for inclusive and sustainable socio-economic development.

Over the past two decades, thanks to the Sovereign’s enlightened vision, Morocco has been able to make significant progress in this sector, based on ambitious strategies designed to make industry a major provider of jobs, a stimulator of productive investment and a vector for growth and development.

Today, the Kingdom has become a key global destination in cutting-edge sectors such as the aeronautics industry, for which the Kingdom is an attractive platform, and the automotive sector, in which Morocco has become a continental leader.

The latest manifestation of this success story is the birth of the first Moroccan car brand for the general public, the first model of which was presented to His Majesty the King on 15 May. Supported by national skills, this project relies primarily on the ecosystem of local automotive suppliers developed by the Kingdom.

However, these results could not be achieved without skilled human capital capable of supporting the implementation of the various sectoral development strategies. This is the context for the new roadmap for the development of vocational training, spearheaded by the Cités des Métiers et des Compétences (CMC) program.

This program, which involves an estimated total investment of 4.4 billion dirhams, provides for the creation of 12 CMCs in the various regions of the Kingdom, which will be multi-sectoral vocational training platforms and will receive 34,000 trainees each year.

The year 2023 was also marked by the inauguration by the King, in the town of Tamesna, of the Cité des Métiers et des Compétences in the Rabat-Salé-Kénitra region, the 4th Cité to open its doors to welcome young people undergoing training, after those in Souss-Massa, Oriental and Laâyoune-Sakia-El Hamra, which began training between October and November 2022.