He is 43 years old, has four children and is from Playa Blanca. His name is Orlando Martín Betancort and he has been on hunger strike for three days in front of the accidental office of the company he worked for, Skal Transporter, to demand that they pay him what they owe him, about 1,300 euros. This Friday marks his seventh night sleeping in a van in Playa Honda.
The company admits that they have a debt with the workers, which in total amounts to about 18,000 euros, but they assure that the Playa Blanca hotel that hired them has not yet paid them. "The hotel is not willing to pay, but the company is still trying to collect. In addition, the hotel says that there are jobs that are not good, something that the company does not share," says a manager.
Orlando Martín assures that this same Thursday some workers were asked by the company for the account number to deposit this money. He tried to give his, but they did not accept it, so he does not know when he will be paid. "I feel helpless. No one tells me anything, everyone doesn't care. I'm giving my life here, they have to pay me. This man is not going to play with my money," says this worker.
He does not know how long he will last on hunger strike and is considering filing a complaint to get his money, but he has not yet done so. According to him, the problem is that if he reports it, he may be "five or six months without getting paid." "We are poor, I cannot be that long without getting paid, I cannot live on air," he insists.
Orlando Martín was hired by this company after spending almost two years unemployed. "They hired me and another 10 or 12 to do a renovation in some apartments in Playa Blanca. We were working for more than a month and then, at the end of the work, they patted us on the back and said, 'don't worry, I'll call you to collect', but that was a month and a half ago," he laments.
"The one in charge is the father, the former PP councilor"
The sole administrator of Skal Transporter is Valentín Oubiña Iglesias, son of Valentín Oubiña Mariño, who resigned as a PP councilor in Galicia after being convicted of tobacco smuggling between Lanzarote and his community. The sentence, which was adopted after reaching an agreement between his defense and the Prosecutor's Office, sentenced him to one year in prison. He was surprised at a Galician airport with 496 cartons of tobacco, from the island of Lanzarote.
Although Oubiña Iglesias is the sole administrator of the company, this worker says that the company "is simply in his son's name, but the one in charge is his father, the former PP councilor." "I have called the councilor to pay me and the last thing I told him is that I was going to report him, but he replied that I should report him, that he does not care," Orlando Martín explains to La Voz.
In this sense, the worker has insisted that he continues to call the former councilor to get his money but "he does not answer." "The day he answers he says to be calm, that he will pay us." "He comes to take the money and our hope with the crisis we have. We come happy because we have work, but then they steal from us blatantly. I cannot go to Galicia to protest there and, therefore, I am in the accidental office that was here in Playa Honda," he says, while assuring that they "will have to take him out of there" if they do not pay him the money.
