The PSOE candidate for the Cabildo of Lanzarote, María Dolores Corujo, spoke during the morning of this Friday on Radio Lanzarote-Onda Cero. Two days before the island elections, she offered a review of her four years at the head of the highest island institution and her proposals for the next legislature.
"Never in four years has so much been done in Lanzarote. We have to talk about the management that the government of Spain, the government of the Canary Islands and the Cabildo of Lanzarote itself have done," Corujo defended on the morning show Buenos días, Lanzarote.
Arrecife, priority for the Cabildo of Lanzarote
Among the points reviewed by the current island president and candidate for re-election, she highlighted the role that the Cabildo has played in its commitment to improving Arrecife.
"Arrecife has never invested as much as the Cabildo of Lanzarote has in this legislature. There is not a single work that has not been financed and awarded by the Cabildo," she assured. School routes, sports facilities or traffic light networks are some of the examples offered by Dolores Corujo before the microphones.
"The structural problems that Arrecife has are obviously not solved in one legislature, Arrecife must be placed exactly the same as the rest of the municipalities on the island," highlighted the island president, in a clear commitment to rehabilitate the island capital in the next term.
"We have acquired very important assets for the city. In addition, she highlighted bets to implement parking, security, as well as the installation of a network of playgrounds, "which the Arrecife City Council has not yet been able to award."
The PSOE Mobility Plan
"The public transport service must be public," predicted the socialist candidate. To tackle the demand for collective mobility on the island, Dolores Corujo is clear about the solutions: "There must be more frequencies, more buses and more people to manage a public service of its own, as other islands have."
The current president of the Cabildo has positioned herself against maintaining the service under concession. "The transport service does not work and some people will tell me, and why couldn't you do it before, president? Well, because there was a contract." At the same time, she reveals that the current situation is unthinkable for an island that is a Biosphere Reserve."
Social welfare
Regarding the privatization of other services such as social welfare in previous legislatures, Dolores Corujo has stated that "the management of disability and dependency has suffered an absolute irregularity." At the same time, she has winked at the new Dependency Law of the regional government. With this rule, she has assured that "the welfare system is over and the right is recognized from a law." While she foresees for a possible future socialist government that "the dependency and disability services will be managed by the Cabildo of Lanzarote itself, there will be no concessions."
"Nine out of ten seniors want to continue living in their homes," reveals the president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote
"There will not be a single senior who does not have home help management and the comprehensive care service for our dependents, our seniors. We must adapt the homes so that seniors can end their lives where they wish. Improve the quality of life from their homes," she added.
The lack of water
To solve the serious and frequent problems in the management of water on the island. Dolores Corujo has highlighted the value of "recovering the management of water and rescuing public management" as one of the PSOE's proposals in the Cabildo of Lanzarote.
Water cuts are a concern on the island. "The residents of San Bartolomé and Tinajo have their drinking water cut off every two days a week. That is also resolved. It is under contract." The socialist candidate for the Cabildo of Lanzarote asserts that this investment of two million euros to tackle the water cuts in those two areas "will solve, finally, that problem."
"In recent years, the Cabildo had become an institution that does not manage but privatizes," she alluded to the management of the Canary Coalition governments in dependency, in water matters or with the management of public transport.
After the privatization of water management, Dolores Corujo reveals that "not only has the problem not been solved" but "we have encountered many more added problems, the lack of services, pipes, etc.".
The same has happened with wastewater discharges into the sea: "Everyone has looked the other way when sewage was falling and being discharged into our sea. As has happened when a few drops fall and all the shames come out in the city of Arrecife."
"What cannot be is that there are golf courses that do have water and that our farmers open the hose and there is no water there," Corujo insisted.
"We had to make the decision to archive the PIOL because the approach that was being made was something tremendous, that is, they foresaw greater growth of more hotels and more beds on the island of Lanzarote, around 8% per year," Corujo denounced.
Likewise, she has alluded that the analysis of the island's carrying capacity has served as a previous step, "of diagnosis" to be able to face the planning plan. "To have an approach we had to have a diagnosis."
"Whoever loves Lanzarote, whoever truly loves their land, must pamper it, protect it and face clearly without fear the speculation of the territory," Corujo asserts.
The CC "discredit" campaign
"I could never have imagined that Canary Coalition and in this case the candidate for the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Oswaldo Betancort, relying on a media outlet that is owned by Juan Francisco Rosa could do a campaign like the one he has been doing. He has done a campaign of discrediting what we could call political violence. All types of violence must be denounced and political violence as well," she pointed out.
"Many people from many parts of the island have valued putting names to a political, business, legal and media plot to put obstacles to the socialist political campaign."
"This had to be stopped and in order to stop it I have initiated a judicial procedure because everything is not worth it. Using lies or the alleged crime as truthful information through a media outlet is absolutely despicable, denouncable and absolutely worrying."
"When you don't have any kind of reason in the criticism of political management, they enter into personal disqualification and lies. I have never ever had my license withdrawn, not even a point," she stressed.
