Olivia Duque, mayor of Teguise, was this Friday on the program Buenos días, Lanzarote on Radio Lanzarote-Onda Cero to answer some questions in relation to the problems with the unpaid wages of the contractor to the cleaning workers of the municipality and with the argument last Wednesday in the Town Hall plenary session.
Regarding the statements of Marco Bergaz, spokesperson for the Socialist Group in the Town Hall, who stated that "the problems with the company were known", Duque said that "I am not going to allow him to make an exposition of reasons for him to continue doing politics and continue lying and deceiving people because Bergaz seems like a spoiled child who throws a tantrum when he doesn't get his way in something he wants because I gave all the explanations in matters of presidency".
"I am not preventing Mr. Marcos Bergaz from making his request, what I am asking him to do is to do it and focus on doing it, to respect the rules that are established in a plenary session because he is always determined to step over this mayor's office and it cannot be that in the turn of requests and questions he uses it to continue making an exposition of a situation that he politically knows is complicated", declares the mayor.
In this aspect, Duque continues stating that "it is untrue because I am a person who is committed to public management and it would not occur to anyone that we are going to give a contract to a company that is not complying because the law gives you tools to prevent that from happening. It was the technician, the councilor and myself who spoke with the workers when the contract was already tendered and we told them to present us with the entry records stating the situation they were experiencing".
The mayor goes on to explain that when the administration tenders a contract "not only the price is looked at because there are many criteria, just as it is valued that they are aware of the social security payments because what this company is doing is paying the Social Security of the workers but not to them. I cannot do anything about this, most of them have denounced their company".
Regarding the measures that the Teguise Town Hall is taking in this matter, Olivia Duque says that "we have already notified the company that we are going to terminate the contract and now they have a few days to oppose or not and the ideal is that they do not oppose to continue with the procedure. We are already with the new contract and we are putting on the table the idea of hiring staff to cover existing absences as soon as possible and, on the other hand, to take out an emergency contract, so there will be a new contract and a new company".
Collaboration of clubs and users in cleaning
Users and sports clubs have been surprised after receiving an email from the Department of Sports led by Alejandro Ramírez in which they were asked not to use the showers in the changing rooms and to take away their own waste due to the lack of cleaning staff.
On this issue, the mayor assures that "one thing is that the Department of Sports, under its own criteria, has understood that it has to ask for the citizen collaboration of the users in the sports facilities to try to keep them as good as possible and another thing is what is requested from the mayor's office to be done, and that is that all the municipal workers from other areas collaborate with the situation and are making a great effort to maintain minimum levels of cleanliness in all sports centers and schools".
"The clubs are shocked by the email where this collaboration is requested because until that moment they had not had problems and things were being taken out as best as they could and things were fine, we did not have the cleaning that obviously you have when you have two or three people but it was being maintained", she concludes.
