Cruises continue to leave the Arrecife facilities without receiving 90 percent of the water they request; the scale for weighing merchandise does not work and everything that enters the ITV premises has to be transferred; the Port Authority has only carried out a superficial cleaning of the many damages caused by Delta
Chaos has taken over the port of Los Mármoles. What is supposed to be one of the most important ports in the country, considering the number of passengers entering through it and the unloading of merchandise, is immersed in a deep sea of deficiencies and shortcomings that have already caused the logical anger of the professionals who work there every day, frustrated by the lack of attention they receive from those responsible for fixing the many messes that add up to an almost endless list.
The most striking thing about the case is that it has been these same professionals who have denounced the problems time and again without receiving a single response, as they emphasized this Friday in the contact they had with this editorial team.
They do not understand how it is possible that after the commitments assumed by the Las Palmas Port Authority only a "face wash" of the premises has been done without solving many of the problems that Delta left in its wake on the Island. In fact, most of the things that were broken have not been fixed.
On the other hand, as the president of the Association of Consignees, Tomás Fajardo, explained to this editorial team, there is a serious problem with the service being provided to the large cruise ships that arrive almost daily to the deficient dock, in such basic matters as water supply. The large cruise ships that call at Lanzarote are having to leave with amounts of water that in some cases do not even reach 10 percent of what they demand. The problem is as silly as that a new 16-centimeter pipe was bought so that more of the liquid element could come out and the outlet mechanism that is available is much smaller. "We are supplying 10 percent of what the ships are asking for, with very recent cases of ships that have asked for 400 tons and we have had to give them 100. We are setting a good example," Fajardo complained.
To delve further into the bleeding wound of a place abandoned for years by those who should have taken care of it, now it turns out that the scale with which the goods that enter the port every day have to be weighed does not work either. What is the solution that businessmen have had to take? Send everything that enters to be weighed to the places where the Technical Vehicle Inspection (ITV) is carried out, which means not only an absurd and avoidable disruption but an additional expense for which no one has yet taken responsibility.
All this has no justification for those who suffer it, just as it has no justification for them that during the first meeting of the Board of Directors of the Las Palmas Port Authority chaired by Emilio Mayoral, the representatives of Lanzarote -María Isabel Déniz on behalf of the capital's City Council and Manuel Fajardo on behalf of the Cabildo- did not raise any of these important issues.
Situation of cruises
And if we are talking about deficiencies, what can be said about what happens with the treatment of tourists who arrive on board a cruise ship. Apart from the Dantean images of visitors walking along the road to save the enormous distance between the port of Los Mármoles and the city center, the port professionals complain about the lack of political interest in making an interesting promotion. While on islands like Fuerteventura a special welcome is being given to all the ships that arrive, with a reception in which majoreros participate with the typical costumes of the land and in which products such as goat cheese are offered, in Lanzarote nothing is being done. In fact, the office that the Tourist Board has there is left to the hand of God.
As if this were not enough, this Thursday a bus stop was inaugurated so that cruise tourists could get on and off quietly in the area of the Charco de San Ginés that is already inoperative. Apart from the undoubted fact that the large vehicles that transport visitors cannot make a normal turn there, the area is totally invaded by other vehicles.