The spokesman for the Renew Tinajo Movement (MRT), Antonio Morales, denounced this Monday that "the mayor, Jesús Machín, and his government group have once again missed an opportunity to implement economic measures that benefit the residents of the municipality after recently approving absolutely opaque and wasteful budgets for 2022”.
Morales explains in this regard that “the Tinajo Government has wasted money again this year. It is shameful, it is a mockery that the mayor continues to fail to fulfill what he promises to the rest of the parties and the residents themselves”. “It is a budget that is not real and not very transparent. On the contrary, it is quite opaque and does not tell all the truths about municipal expenses”, he affirms.
The MRT spokesman expresses in this sense his surprise after learning about certain expenses that “are once again an authentic barbarity”. Thus, he demands that the mayor clarify in which companies his government group has spent almost 9,000,000 euros with the concept of “other works”. “The budget shows the amount of 877,000 euros assigned as ‘other works carried out by other companies and professionals’”, he explains. “It is already common in Tinajo that year after year items exceeding 800,000 euros are contemplated and included under this heading of ‘other works carried out by other companies and professionals’, but unfortunately these investments and these works do not have an impact on the improvement of services or the well-being of the residents of the municipality of Tinajo”, laments Morales, who assures that “we are talking about some 2.5 million euros destined to these companies in the last three years”.
Along the same lines, the party councilor also asks Jesús Machín for explanations after the expense on public lighting has doubled in these latest budgets. “We are very concerned that 403,000 euros have been paid in the electricity bill, when in 2021 this expense was half. It is an authentic barbarity what this City Council supposedly pays for public lighting”, he warns.
Antonio Morales also denounces that the mayor has relocated an item of 39,000 euros in Parks and Gardens, "an amount that in principle should be used for Tinajo to pay Canal Gestión Lanzarote the pending debt of the City Council for the supply of parks and gardens". “In the years 2020 and 2021 the mayor did not put a single euro in this concept”, explains Morales. "In this same area, that of Parks and Gardens, which also includes municipal expenses for the maintenance of playgrounds, he adds that “there are barely 37,000 euros, so we explain that the playgrounds in the municipality are how they are, which give pity and feeling”.
"The Government group is once again spending money on unnecessary aspects and others that we still do not know"
Faced with these "high expenses", the Renew Tinajo Movement questions the "strong cuts" to which the municipal government has subjected vital areas such as Social Services in this year. “It is very surprising to see how in the section on Social Services, Family and Non-profit Institutions it went from 161,000 euros in 2021 to only 43,000 euros for the year 2022, a reduction that is too drastic in such a sensitive area”, argues Morales, “and even more so when people are still pulling from public institutions and many NGOs to be able to move forward and to receive essential aid”.
For Morales, the mayor and his government group “have once again failed to fulfill their commitment to residents and companies in the municipality to subsidize the implementation of alternative energies”. “There are no serious youth or cultural policies; there is no commitment to improve basic services, such as public lighting, asphalt or the adaptation of Tinajo to the Accessibility Law”, he asserts, after questioning that “the government group is once again spending everyone's money on unnecessary aspects and others that we still do not know today”.
To realize the “lack of planning” and the “incoherence” of these recently approved 2022 Budgets, the Renew Movement cites as an example this aforementioned cut in Social Services compared to the “more than generous expenses in the Festivals section, which in this year amount to no less than 300,000 euros”, that is, "about 7 times more than what a City Council like Tinajo dedicates to its Social Services in a post-Covid year". In addition, the MRT greatly misses the collaboration and support that an Institution such as the Tinajo City Council should provide to the primary sector. “In these budgets they allocate only 11,000 euros to what they call Agriculture”, explains Morales. In his opinion, these municipal accounts “do not support the primary sector, so punished by the current inflation, nor do they respond to the rise in prices of food, energy, or even water”.
The MRT questions not only the content of these accounts, but also the forms. “It is the 2022 budget approved in 2023, which arrives badly, late, without rigor or planning, and with a waste of public money that has not benefited the residents of the municipality of Tinajo in any way”, he highlights.
