The counselor and candidate of the Popular Party for the Presidency of the Cabildo of Lanzarote and La Graciosa, Jacobo Medina, defends his commitment to improving the offer and educational quality on the island, and assures that "it is time to resume efforts aimed at creating the university campus". "We cannot continue dragging and postponing this need any longer," says Medina, who already defended the proposal, without success due to the opposition of the PSOE and Podemos, in the plenary debate on the state of the island, last June.
"Some defend equality, social rights and the training of our young people very well in front of the gallery, but when it comes to the truth, they force our young people to leave Lanzarote to access university studies, forgetting that for many families it becomes a privilege that they cannot afford", Medina denounces.
The candidate of the Popular Party emphasizes that "the debate of campus yes or campus no, is already over" and our responsibility as public representatives is to complete the procedures initiated more than a decade ago to make the university campus a reality. A campus that allows relocating and concentrating the current university offer, such as Nursing, Tourism or the UNED itself, and that is also open to the incorporation of new university degrees in line with the new trends in the labor market.
"If we really bet on diversifying our economy with activities that have to do with the environment, clean energy or new technologies, the reasonable thing is to offer our young people the possibility of training here without the extra cost that it implies for Lanzarote families to face the expenses of travel and accommodation in other islands or in the peninsula", Medina emphasizes.
The counselor defends that "the students of Lanzarote have the same rights as those of Gran Canaria or Tenerife" and highlights that "every time the Popular Party has had government responsibilities, it has prioritized the university campus. The Populars point out that "first it was in 2009, making the specific modification of the island planning plan that allowed its construction and then, at the beginning of this mandate, when from Public Works, Jacobo Medina tendered the drafting of the project for the accesses", they point out from the Popular Party.
For Medina, the big problem during all these years has been that "neither CC nor the Socialist Party have believed in the campus and have done nothing to achieve it". The PP candidate assures that from May 28, "when he holds the presidency of the Cabildo, one of my priorities will be to demand that the Government of the Canary Islands make the Lanzarote campus a reality".
"It is about time that we have modern and better dimensioned infrastructures for the current and future demand because it will also have a positive impact on the educational quality", concludes Medina.
