Coalition Canaria has questioned that the government group of Arrecife brought to plenary this Monday the extrajudicial recognition of 174 invoices worth 2.6 million euros, "which did not follow the appropriate legal procedure and which correspond in their entirety to the mandate of the current capital city mayoress, Ástrid Pérez (PP)". "The Arrecife City Council is back to its old ways," says the nationalist group.
In addition, it denounces that this procedure, which "is reserved for exceptional cases of some invoice that for some reason, also exceptional, did not follow the appropriate procedure to allow payment to suppliers, has become the usual procedure in the face of the null management of the current management of the City Council".
Likewise, the nationalists maintain that since the Government Group eliminated "by political decision the prior control of the contracting procedures, old situations are repeated in which the councilor on duty called the friendly company to do one service or another without following the procedure established by law for contracting in the public administration”.
"Invoices to the same company that add up to more than 15,000 euros, without the three relevant offers having been requested, services commissioned without the corresponding credit retention or invoices that do not have the signature of the responsible worker, are some of the situations detected", they denounce.
“It is not understood that invoices for essential services of the City Council continue to be taken for extrajudicial recognition or that they refuse to clarify in a plenary session whether the objections to certain invoices to communication companies have been lifted prior to the approval of the payment by the mayoress”, lamented the nationalist spokesperson, Echedey Eugenio, who recalls that "these habits have caused judicial problems in other mandates in this City Council".
In this regard, they question that "what happened in the past in the Arrecife City Council has not served as an example to the current" municipal officials. “They are back to their old ways and things have to be done well and give equal opportunities to the companies and self-employed workers of the capital who provide municipal services”, emphasizes Eugenio.
Defends the "honorability and work" of the comptroller
In addition, he affirms that "the complaints about the demonstrated management incapacity are once again evident, when only a month after approving the budget, they have already had to modify it because they forgot to include an item to expropriate land or pay for water". A reflection, in the opinion of the CC-PNC group, "of the posturing policy of the City Council presided over by the popular Astrid Pérez".
According to the CC spokesperson, the economic management of the city is "disastrous" and "the data that indicated the decrease in the average payment period was a mirage, since it did not count these 174 invoices worth 2.6 million euros that had not been paid, in many of the cases since July 2019, when they came to the Government".
On the other hand, the nationalists wanted to "value the honorability and work of the municipal comptroller despite the criticisms and insinuations of the Government Group", reminding the mayoress and councilor of Finance that "in the specific case of the file for the food of homeless people, the Nationalist Group already warned about the incorrectness of the procedure and that when it requested access to it there was already a warning from the comptroller in this regard, which they ignored to continue with the contracting and which later caused the objection that so surprised the mayoress". “I don't know what is more worrying, whether the files are not looked at or that they do not heed the warnings of the bodies in charge of ensuring the legality of things”, said Eugenio.
Thus, the nationalists invite the Government Group to "undo the path taken towards chaos and lack of procedure in the Administration, restoring the prior control that guarantees the proper use of public money and gives citizens the peace of mind that the Arrecife City Council does not intend to return to its old ways".
