The LEP - Sí Podemos Group will defend in the next Plenary a motion for the Cabildo of Lanzarote and the Island Water Consortium to demand that Canal Gestión Lanzarote "end the habitual practice of presenting abusive invoices to its subscribers for unjustified consumption."
In the motion, the purple formation states that one of the most common problems that citizens have in their direct contact with Canal Gestión "is the appearance of abusive invoices, increasingly common, which often exceed several thousand euros."
"When a user family receives one of these invoices, which often correspond to errors or breakdowns in the meters, the only two options they have are to pay it before claiming to avoid a supply cut or file a lawsuit and assume its costs," says the text of the motion.
Podemos points out that in the economy of the vast majority of families on the Island, "an expense of this type implies an economic problem that is difficult to assume or directly unfeasible, leaving them in a situation of absolute defenselessness." In addition, they add that Canal Gestión "takes several months to resolve the return due to breakdown of forty percent of what was paid."
The purple formation also points out that despite being aware of this situation and "having shown its concern to the media," the Cabildo's government group "does not provide any effective solution to the affected homes, limiting itself to recommending that they also file a complaint with the Consortium."
The councilor of LEP – Sí Podemos, Myriam Barrios, assures that "the Cabildo of Lanzarote has sufficient administrative and economic capacity to find short-term solutions to this abuse committed by a company over which many suspicions still hover."
Several initiatives in the motion
For this reason, Podemos explains that the motion includes several initiatives. Firstly, as the affected homes "have been organizing around a platform where they inform and help each other," Podemos requests that the Cabildo, through the consumer area, "support with its adhesion the collective claim against Canal Gestión Lanzarote for the abuses committed, assuming its cost."
Another of the requests included in Podemos' motion is that the Cabildo of Lanzarote "negotiate three issues with Canal Gestión": "a discount for breakdown of fifty percent, and not forty, as until now"; a second issue that consists of "that the collection of invoices detected by the company for excessive consumption as a result of a breakdown is not done immediately but is withheld until the resolution of the file processed as a result of the breakdown"; and finally that, in the necessary cases, "the Cabildo of Lanzarote urge Canal Gestión to exempt from the payment of invoices as a result of an abuse of right by the company."
On the other hand, Podemos adds that the motion is completed with two other requests: "that the Island Water Consortium of Lanzarote proceed to prepare a report on the cost overruns and irregularities in the billing by Canal Gestión de Lanzarote in order to have a complete vision of the problem"; and on the other hand "to have a safe diagnosis and that what is stated in the Judgment of the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands 609/2017 that decreed the nullity of the concession of the integral water service to Canal Gestión Lanzarote is fulfilled."
