The deputy spokesman for the Canarian Coalition in the Cabildo, Pedro San Ginés, has assured this Tuesday that Canal Gestión acquired in the past term, under his presidency, a new pipe to bring water to La Graciosa, but it has not been installed.
In his statement, in which he blames the current government group for the shortage suffered by the eighth island, he states that this pipe was acquired by Canal “with the funds committed in the tender from which it was awarded the management of the Integral Water Cycle”. San Ginés refers to the negotiated procedure by which he left the management of the water in the hands of Canal de Isabel II, after the tender was deserted.
According to the former president of the Cabildo and the Consortium, Canal would have deducted the money from that purchase from the investment that it was obliged to make on the island, although it does not clarify whether the commitment also implied that it would pay for its installation, despite the fact that he was the one who negotiated that contract.
In this regard, he limits himself to blaming the current president, María Dolores Corujo, and her government, for not having “ensured its installation, either demanding it from the Canal, or executing it with their own resources if the investments by the concessionaire company had already been exhausted”.
"If the government had done its homework, we would not have gone through this crisis"
“It is an absolute lack of foresight on the part of the government of Dolores Corujo that, despite having a new pipe acquired during the past term under the Presidency of the Canarian Coalition, has allowed us to find ourselves in this limit situation. In short, if the island government had done its homework in these three and a half years, we would not have gone through this water crisis in La Graciosa”, says San Ginés, who does not clarify when it was acquired exactly or why it was not installed under his mandate.
The only thing he affirms is that the “solution” that was proposed then was “to lay the new pipe and repair the old one, in such a way that there would always be two parallel networks as a guarantee of supply in the event of any breakdown in one of them”.
“Another complementary possibility”, added San Ginés, “would be the acquisition of a portable, rapidly installed plant with a capacity of five hundred cubic meters that would be installed on the island to prevent this situation from happening again in the future”.
He considers "a ridicule" that a tanker was taken
“What is an absolute ridicule, a useless expense and an unacceptable charade, was the photo of taking a couple of miserable tanks, when for drinking it is bought in the supermarket and for the rest of the needs two tanks did not solve absolutely anything. Among other things, because to fill four bottles there were already deposits in La Graciosa with more water than the displaced”, says the deputy spokesman for CC.
“During the current legislature, my group has demanded, via a motion to the plenary session of the Cabildo and also as a resolution in the Debate on the State of the Island, that the Insular Water Consortium undertake an investment plan to continue improving the integral water cycle with resources from the Cabildo and the town councils, which we must not forget are the owners of the same; as we already did and approved during our stage at the head of the island government, proposals that have been systematically rejected with the well-known purpose of blaming his predecessor for what is nothing more than the reflection of his inability as a public manager”, questions San Ginés.
“I wonder what is the plan of priority investments to which the government of Dolores Corujo refers, just as the citizens of Lanzarote and La Graciosa will ask. A government that has not been able to execute even what we left bought”, remarked the nationalist spokesman.
For all these reasons, CC affirms that it joins the request of its colleague, the mayor of Teguise Oswaldo Betancort, who has requested an urgent meeting of the Insular Water Consortium “to undertake a definitive solution to the recurring water problem in La Graciosa, so that this situation does not happen again in the future and to accelerate the administrative authorizations that are necessary in a sensitive space from the environmental point of view such as this one”.
