The deputy mayor of Arrecife and secretary of organization of the Canarian Coalition in Lanzarote, Echedey Eugenio, spoke on Wednesday morning on Radio Lanzarote - Onda Cero after the controversy sparked by his statements about migrant minors in which he raised the alarm because unaccompanied migrant minors were going to share schools and health centers with his 5-year-old daughter.
The nationalist councilor has responded to the Socialist Youth of Lanzarote and Izquierda Unida who were asking for his resignation. "Far from correcting, I repeat, whether they like it or not, having 6,000 minors in the Canary Islands that we have to assume as an autonomous community [...] has an impact on education, not because of the place of origin of these minors, but because of the quantity", justified the nationalist leader on the island, after setting social networks on fire with his comments in a local discussion.
"I have not said that it is bad or that it is good, I have said that they are going to share it, it is not an opinion, it is an objective fact. There are 6,000 minors who are in our educational centers," he said. However, the figures offered by Eugenio contradict the official data offered by the Minister of Education of the Government of the Canary Islands, Poli Suárez, at the end of the last academic year. At that time, Suárez assured that of the more than 5,500 minors who were under the tutelage of the Executive on July 22, only 2,188 were enrolled in school, less than half.
Poli Suárez reported two months ago that from the figure of children and adolescents under guardianship, adolescents between 16 and 18 years old are subtracted, who are outside the age of compulsory schooling and those who are awaiting age tests to determine if they are of legal age.
At the same time, the councilor has also added that the 6,000 minors under the tutelage of the Canarian Executive are also "sharing our health system and that is causing it to become saturated." However, the problems of saturation of health resources in the Canary Islands do not come from people and migrant minors. The archipelago is the fifth autonomous community that invests the least in social spending, which includes health and education. In addition, it is at the bottom of the country in Primary Care.
"There is no opinion or interpretable issue there, it is an objective fact, come on, they are numbered and there are lists of people. I really don't understand what the racist point is in that sentence, I am not worried that my daughter shares a class, school or health center with a person of another nationality, I am worried that she does it with more people than that center can hold", Eugenio continued.
Thus, the councilor added "be careful, because I saw María Dolores Corujo Berriel say that tourists were saturating our health system and no one was alarmed accusing her of racism, what is the difference?".
Eugenio has changed the course of his statements and has responded to those who have branded him a racist and xenophobe: "Let them get to work", because "racist is allowing a child to see how his dead mother is thrown overboard". Thus, the councilor has stressed that "if they like" to call him a racist, "let them continue doing so, I have no problem, but let them get to work".
