PERCEPTION OF MANAGEMENT OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN PERUVIAN AMAZON

Purpose: These actions had the sole objective of controlling the spread of the virus and avoiding further damage. The Covid-19 pandemic demanded immediate action from governments worldwide. Method: The research responds to a non-experimental design and quantitative approach. The questionnaires were applied to the capitals of the provinces of the Amazon region. This study was worked under the non-experimental design and a quantitative approach. Results and conclusion: The results allowed us to know that the citizens of the Amazon present 48.5% as ignorance of the functions of their authorities. So, it was possible to conclude that Amazonian citizens perceive the management of the Regional Government as disapproving, emphasizing that they have little participation in public management measures. Research implications: The Peruvian State oversaw distributing the economic resources to the regions so that they can safeguard their inhabitants. Originality/value: This study was carried out with the intention of knowing the perception of the Amazon citizen about the management of their regional government on this health crisis.


INTRODUCTION
Given the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic, governments were forced to work on action plans to care for the population and not be more affected in the health, economic and political sectors. These actions had the sole objective of controlling the spread of the virus and avoiding further damage (United Nations, 2021). One of the first measures, worldwide, was the announcement by the Governing Council of the European Central Bank to donate almost 900 billion euros as part of the response to the health crisis (European Commission, 2022).
In Latin America, work was done with solutions that revolved around perspectives such as granting emergency powers to the State to address the problem, government actions to pay attention to the administrative and/or political sphere, and the application of quarantines that reduced human freedom (Spigno and Ruz, 2021). This reality meant affections in the economic sector, since the GDP fell by 3.3% (Central Reserve Bank, 2021). In addition, public and private investment also had notable losses. Simultaneously, regional governments registered execution levels of 65.3% (ComexPeru, 2021).
In Peru, the government of the day implemented legal measures so that all the entities of the system can act in favor of protecting the population. In this sense, Supreme Decree No. 010-2020-SA was published, which establishes all the goods and services that are required to respond to the health emergency (Guzmán, 2020). Other measures that were adopted were the delivery of economic bonds to vulnerable families, the creation of programs such as Reactiva Peru, the omission of taxes and the withdrawal of money from the Pension Fund Administrators (AFP). This meant that 17% of GDP was used for pandemic care (Jaramillo and López, 2021).
Even though Peru presented the largest economic plan in Latin America, the regional governments needed to demonstrate and guarantee a management that clearly favors citizens (Nieto, 2022). For this same author and for Vargas et al. (2020), there was a deficiency in the strategies, a delay in decision-making, causing large groups of the population not to have received due attention. Added to this is the lack of technical resources for the health specialty, demonstrating that the regions are not yet ready to face challenges such as a pandemic (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and European Committee of the Regions, 2020). 3 Meanwhile, the Regional Government of Amazonas proposed a plan to strengthen health sector services in 2020. This project sought greater citizen participation so that security prevails over the crisis. In addition, it made clear the need for equipment, supplies and human resources to be able to act during a period of three months (Resolution of the Regional Executive, 2020). Given the proposal, the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) granted the amount of more than 58 million soles for the 2020 period and more than 74 million soles for the following year (MEF, 2021). From this, the authorities began with actions to cover health and economic needs. However, these initiatives lost their effectiveness as they were included in acts of corruption. The clearest consequence was the harm to Amazonian citizens (Massuga et al., 2022).

MATERIALS AND METHODS
This study was worked under the non-experimental design and a quantitative approach. The population was made up of the inhabitants of the capitals of the provinces of the Amazon region with ages between 18 and 64 years. To obtain the sample of each capital, the stratified probabilistic test was used.

RESULTS
It is important to know that local and regional governments have the obligation to be accountable for their actions and allow citizens to be part of projects that directly affect them (Arellano andBlanco, 2013, cited in Díaz, 2017). This is reflected in citizen perception and builds experiences in the public sphere. 4 Public management is characterized by working towards the development and application of strategies in complicated social contexts, considering practices and methodologies focused on administration processes (Gamboa et al., 2021). This implies that the government acts for its entire population, without distinction, covering economic and health aspects, among others, such as the pandemic. Also, it is necessary to have authorities that can manage a better service to the community, without any type of irregular favoring (Sánchez et al., 2022). Just as these officials are obliged to inform the population about the action plans, they must keep abreast of the news presented by the entity. In the second table, it is shown that 48.5% have a low level of knowledge about the functions of the Regional Government of Amazonas (Obara et al., 2022). It can be noted that the inhabitants of the Bagua province have more knowledge about the work carried out by their authorities on the health emergency caused by Covid-19. However, in almost the entire region, the specific measures towards the budget granted are unknown. The data presented is like what was found by Guaifua (2019), who determined that 76% of the population does not handle information on provincial administrative tasks. Simultaneously, Solís (2019) found that just over half of the population participates in management activities. Faced with this reality, the need to promote the involvement of the population in the projects of their local or regional governments is reaffirmed, to improve their living conditions. Thus, it depends on the participation of the population so that there is a transparent rendering of accounts on the part of the authorities. Consequently, acts of corruption are avoided and the budget is invested in the actions that were designated (Salas, 2020). In addition, by keeping the population aware of the activities that benefit them, the perception of their leaders' management will be much more objective (Tejada and Guadalupe, 2021). Next, the following table shows the perception of the population about the strengths and weaknesses of the Regional Government of Amazonas. For the management of a region to be successful, effective, and assertive communication must prevail, even more so in times of crisis due to a pandemic. As an opportunity for improvement, regional governments must seek the best paths of action and interaction with the population (Guevara et al., 2021). This, to avoid the results presented in Table 4, on the perception of the population about their authorities. More than 50% of the Amazonian population disapproves of the management of its regional authorities regarding the attention of the Covid-19 pandemic. This percentage is due to the appearance of acts of corruption, such as irregular purchases and contracting of services at non-equivalent prices. This is like what Ramírez (2017) stated about the increase in acts of corruption in local governments. One of the actions to avoid this type of event is budget management in conjunction with the citizenry. In this way, there is control over the power groups that seek to benefit from foreign resources (Huárac, Díaz and Cuba, 2022). Table 5 shows the level of perception of the regional population, considering each of the provinces of the Amazon region. The population of the Regional Government of Amazonas perceives the management of its authorities in 72.5% as a medium level. This means that they must improve their ability to act strategically.

DISCUSSION
Despite these indicators, it is important to recognize that citizen participation has become more important due to its impact on management efficiency (Núñez et al., 2010). However, the confidence indicators of part of the population still need to be improved. The results of the level of perception of the population about the Regional Government of Amazonas is medium with a percentage of 72.5%. This coincides with what was mentioned by Abanto (2020), who establishes that more than 70% of the population perceives a moderate level of local government management. Likewise, the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (2018) issued a report that reports that 21.6% of the population rates the assessment of the regional government as good or moderate.

CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTION
Similarly, there is a similarity with what was exposed by De la Cadena (2019), who argues that the population values municipal management at a regular level for rural and urban areas. The results obtained by this study coincide with what was established by Canel (2018), who proposes effective communication and a better level of education in the population so that it is kept informed of the actions of its authorities.