The mayor of Tinajo, Jesús Machín, testified this Tuesday as a suspect in the Court of Instruction Number 1 of Arrecife, which accuses him of an alleged crime against the environment, for having ordered the dumping of waste on a municipal plot located behind the cemetery. The complainant was the spokesperson for the Renovating Movement of Tinajo, Antonio Morales, who last January decided to go to the Local Police after having warned the mayor twice about the illegality of depositing organic waste on that land.
The Police then brought the facts to the attention of Seprona and they transferred the complaint to the Court, which decided to open criminal proceedings. Thus, on February 28, Judge Silvia Muñoz took a statement from the complainant and this Tuesday summoned the mayor at the request of the Prosecutor's Office, which saw indications of a crime.
In his statement, Jesús Machín did not deny the reported events and acknowledged that he had given the order to transfer household waste to that site that the City Council had had to remove, given the problems that have been registered for months with the company that provides the garbage collection service. However, he also assured that two days later they hired a company to transfer them to the Zonzamas landfill.
"He told me he knew it wasn't right and he did it again"
For his part, Antonio Morales denounces that these events have been repeated, and that the City Council left garbage on that site at least twice by order of the mayor. In fact, he emphasizes that Jesús Machín himself acknowledged this when he asked him for the first time about this issue in the Plenary Session, last December. "He told me that he knew it wasn't right, but that he had no other way, and I begged him not to continue doing this kind of thing because I understand that it is illegal, that it threatens public health and that that land is not suitable for leaving organic waste, but two weeks later he did the same thing again," said the councilor, who was then when he decided to go to the Local Police.
"He would think that I was going to say not to process that, but his obligation is to process it," said the mayor, who added that the Police "have no powers" in that matter and that what he did was transfer it to Seprona. In addition, Machín has questioned that Antonio Morales filed this complaint, which he accompanied with photographs of the state of that site converted into a real landfill. "I don't think they are the correct ways, but well, everyone is free to do whatever they want," the mayor said regarding that complaint.
Regarding the state of the site, he has blamed it on the lack of a clean point in the municipality. In fact, he explained that the City Council proposed to locate a clean point on that same plot located behind the cemetery, but the Cabildo reported against it, as it was not a suitable land for it. "So what happens? That the neighbors go, and since they have nowhere to put things, they put them there. What do we do? We pick them up in two or three days, quickly, and take them to Zonzamas, where we have to take them," the mayor said on Radio Lanzarote Onda Cero. However, what is being investigated in this new criminal case is the order he gave himself as mayor to deposit organic waste on that land, when it had accumulated in the municipality's containers because the company providing the service was not removing it.
"What I do have to say, and I have even told the judge, is that I will try to control or put a vigilant guard, so that no one can throw anything away, given what I have seen. And I regret this, because the neighbors will have to find a solution. What happens with this now? That people, secretly, are going to throw garbage in any corner and it's a shame," Machín concluded.
