Coalición Canaria has expressed its disagreement with the statements made by the president of the Cabildo, Manuela Armas, and the CEO of Inalsa, Plácida Guerra, at a press conference last Monday regarding the management of the public company during the last legislature. The group has stated that "in the previous term, all management, production, purification, reuse, financial debt, and general expenses parameters were improved, and the Island's needs in terms of water were detected and reflected in an investment plan, funding was sought to carry them out, prioritizing them, and the public company was saved from a possible technical bankruptcy, after the disastrous management carried out in the past by the PSOE-PIL pact".
In response to criticism for the alleged "lack of foresight", CC has stated that at the beginning of its management, Inalsa "was practically in technical bankruptcy and, despite this, all management, production, purification, reuse, financial debt, general expenses, overtime, personnel, energy, etc. parameters were improved".
Likewise, the political group insists that "it was the PSOE-PIL pact that renounced carrying out the Janubio desalination plant with public funds, contemplated in the NATIONAL HYDROLOGICAL PLAN 2001-2008 with a planned production of 10,000 m3/day, intending to privatize it" and that the privatization, which was opposed by the rest of the political forces and citizens, caused an award for contractual breach that condemned INALSA to the payment of 10 million euros that still hangs over the public company, without us knowing if the PSOE-PIL still maintains the privatizing criteria and intentions that they defended so much in the past, and the fulfillment of that fraudulent contract whose declaration of nullity by the courts has been requested by the Cabildo at the request of Coalición Canaria".
According to Coalición Canaria, "in RD 287/2006 of March 10, which regulated the urgent works at the national level to alleviate the damage of the drought, the construction of a regulating reservoir in the municipality of Tías, for an amount of 1.5 million euros, was contemplated by the Central Government of the PSOE, and the competent Ministry was entrusted to establish the deadlines for the execution of the works, without the socialists having given any explanation to date of what has happened with works that would have allowed to increase the water reserves on the island, partially solving the problem at hand".
CC denies that there was no planning on the current problem, nor that the PSOE was unaware of it. For this, it alludes to the Needs Plan signed in October 2005 and approved by the Board of Directors of Inalsa, in the presence of Manuel Fajardo Paralea, which included several deposits to be located in different places, including precisely one of 50,000 m3 in Tías. "This Plan was transferred to the Central Administration of the State and, more specifically, to the Secretary General of the Territory and Biodiversity, Antonio Serrano of the PSOE, without any response having been obtained to date".
Coalición Canaria affirms that "not only did it plan, but it also established a plan of priorities for those investments for an amount of 3.5 million euros that should have been equally co-financed, but only the Autonomous Community through the General Directorate of Water -which was then directed by the conejero Orlando Umpiérrez- responded with 1.5 million euros, apart from other multiple and varied investments in the Island of sanitation and hydraulic infrastructures".
Likewise, CC assures that the president was aware of the problems regarding water production and storage, since "in June 2007, the Board of Directors of Inalsa, in the presence again of the general secretary of the PSOE and the socialist mayor of the municipality of Tías, approved the report of Activities and Works for the period 2003-2006. Likewise, in said council, D. Mario Pérez personally offered the president his collaboration to expand this information and clarify the situation, so we do not understand this attitude either".
Coalición Canaria requests "first-hand information" from the President of the Cabildo "so that once again we can lend a hand for the solution of structural and strategic problems of depth such as the one at hand", but assures that "it will not allow the political forces with greater responsibility in the more than disastrous management of this and other public companies (including the Cabildo itself), to have the nerve to hold CC responsible for the excesses, absurdities and lack of rigor and criteria in the management that they committed in the past".
Finally, CC affirms that "the homework is done, the problems detected and the financing that the president now says she will seek, is largely foreseen by the State. Therefore, it is this government pact that has to assume the responsibility that corresponds to them today and that they lacked in the past when they had the opportunity to exercise it. In that, but in no other privatizing path as they intended, they will be able to find an ally in Colación Canaria when demanding that the PSOE that governs the nation, comply with the obligations and commitments acquired with this island in terms of water, and to which this PSOE-PIL pact should not renounce by blaming Coalición Canaria for the problems that they themselves generated in any case, with the erratic policy that is today being analyzed by an Investigation Commission that does not finish seeing its conclusions".
ACN Press
