About twenty cars. That is the number of taxis that have been affected in Tías by the fuel in poor condition that Disa distributed among the gas stations on the island, according to the president of the Association of Taxi Business Owners of Lanzarote, Leocadio Martín, who assures that they have been suffering this problem "for two or three months".
"There were problems in some dispensers in Tías that broke the pumps and engines of several cars. In fact, my car was one of those that broke down and the joke cost me almost 3,000 euros," says Martín, who also points out that he knows that there have also been rental cars that had problems. "In Puerto del Carmen there are 6 or 7 rental cars that were affected," he specifies.
90 percent of taxi drivers in Tías, according to Martín, refuel at the PCAN in the municipality, which, in fact, seems to have been one of the gas stations most affected by the volume of vehicles that pass through there, according to the Cabildo. Martín himself filled the tank of his taxi at this gas station and his car ended up in the workshop. "The workshop told us that it was the diesel and what was inside the diesel was sludge, it was black, and that blocks the diesel pumps. In fact, the pumps could not be repaired and had to be bought new."
Compensations
However, according to Martín, the PCAN of Tías has taken care of the repairs. "The PCAN paid all the repair costs and, in my case, they even gave me money for the days that I could not work because my taxi was broken down," Martín specifies.
This taxi driver states that, although this has happened now, the quality of diesel in Lanzarote has not been good "for some time". "The quality of diesel is bad, but it's like everything on this island. You go to a workshop, you ask them how the diesel works in Lanzarote and they tell you that it's terrible."
"We have to change the diesel filter every 10,000 or 15,000 kilometers, because what comes inside is mud. And that's if you have a good few days of work, in 10 days, you have to change the diesel filters and in the end it's an expense. The normal thing when I started as a taxi driver was to change them every 30,000 or 40,000. Now if you do that, it seems like you're dragging a bus and the car doesn't move."
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[Disa does not want to give more explanations about the "altered" fuel and the Cabildo denies that there has been collaboration->56506]
[Disa acknowledges that it supplied fuel in poor condition to four gas stations on the island and assures that it has already withdrawn it->56393]
[The Cabildo maintains that Disa could be distributing poor quality diesel causing "constant breakdowns" in cars->56341]