Coalition Canaria has requested that the bidding process for the services currently provided by the Association of Relatives of Alzheimer's Patients (AFA) be suspended and that "the different possibilities contemplated by both the Canary Islands Social Services Law and the Public Sector Contracts Law itself be explored, so that it has options to continue with the service that it has been offering to the citizens of Lanzarote for 23 years, with full satisfaction from its users and which today reaches almost a hundred families in Lanzarote and La Graciosa.”
Likewise, in a motion that the nationalists will defend in the next Plenary Session, they demand that while AFA continues to provide the management service of the Doctor Domingo Guzmán Family Respite Residence, “the economic conditions of the same be reviewed, as it represents an unsustainable loss for this non-profit association, and seriously jeopardizes the continuity in the provision of the service.”
The spokesperson for the formation, Pedro San Ginés, who presided over the Cabildo for ten years, refers to the first agreement that was signed with AFA under the Presidency of Enrique Pérez Parrilla, in January 1998, “for the provision of care services to this vulnerable sector of the population in Las Cabreras”. “That was the start of AFA's contractual relationship with the Cabildo of Lanzarote, and we have no qualms in recognizing that it was a complete success for the institution then presided over by the Socialist Party,” emphasizes San Ginés.
The spokesperson adds that “between the years 1999 and 2006, there were up to 14 agreements, extensions and addenda, which without the need for a public tender, and always under the Presidency of the PSOE, the Cabildo signed with AFA”. “Not only for the management of the Las Cabreras Day Center, but also for adapted transport to this center and the Insular Hospital”, points out Pedro San Ginés.
In addition, he recalls that in 2007 a contract was signed with AFA for the management of the Las Cabreras Day Stay Center”, which expired in 2013, that is, under his Presidency. Meanwhile, a year earlier, in 2012, the Cabildo launched the Julio Santiago Obeso Social Rehabilitation Center through a new agreement with AFA for the management of 20 places in said center, which San Ginés also left in the hands of this association.