Some 300 workers in the nation’s child welfare agency PANI marched Monday to the building housing the Constitutional Court chambers to pressure the President and her Minister of Finance Edgar Ayales to include in the 2014 budget the 7% of tax revenues that chamber ordered last year should go to fund children’s welfare.

The court (Sala IV) ruled that the funds should be earmarked for PANI by law, beginning in 2010. The ruling was a suit brought by Broad Front Party lawmaker (and now that party’s standard bearer for the 2014 elections) Jose Maria Villalta.

Villalta told the court that the government did not keep its promise to allot 45 billion colones to PANI in 2012 and owes the agency 81 billion from 2010 and 2011. This is not at all unusual here for a law to be passed requiring funding and then ignored by the government.

La Nacion reported that the rough draft of the 2014 budget passed on to the Legislative Assembly only contains 1% of the tax revenues, according to PANI lawyer Luis Quiros. Monday, Quiros mourned that on National Children’s Day, millions that should have gone to PANI were used for other purposes.

“There are many millions lacking that have left the institution almost in a state of collapse,” Quiros said. The same lack of funding in defiance of the law also occurred some years ago with education.

In PANI nationwide, 41 regional offices try to help some 70,000 children at shelters, non-governmental organizations and attention to cases of abuse.