Red Cross will not be monitoring this Wednesday the four beaches of Lanzarote in which it has been providing this service for years: Playa Grande, Playa Blanca, Las Cucharas and El Reducto. [As La Voz de Lanzarote announced last week, the NGO had given an ultimatum->61779] to the Security and Emergency Consortium, for the non-payment of 273,000 euros since 2009 (which was when the Consortium was created) and a debt of more than 700,000 from the municipalities of Yaiza, Teguise and Tías prior to that date. Once the deadline has passed, and in the absence of a response, the Red Cross has decided to abandon the agreement that binds it to the Emergency Consortium.
"We cannot afford to be the lenders of public institutions," said the president of the Red Cross in Lanzarote, Rafael Hernández, to ACN Press. The Red Cross asked the Consortium this summer to commit to approving a payment plan that "has not materialized." The Consortium has paid the last three months but still owes 273,000 euros. "We warned 40 days ago that if there was no response we would leave the service and nothing has been resolved," says Hernández.
The president assures that they will have to dismiss the 17 workers of the service, including lifeguards and boat skippers. He points out that the non-payments of the institutions have not affected the employees' payrolls because the Red Cross has requested loans to face the salaries, but that the situation "is already unsustainable."
The City Council of Yaiza, according to Hernández, owes them another 500,000 euros approximately for the beach service and for ambulance services, while Tías and Teguise owe more than 200,000 between them. The Red Cross has, in addition to these 17 workers, another 28 employees who work in the office and in the ambulance agreement with 112 in addition to other projects to assist immigrants.
Consortium
For their part, sources from the Consortium assure that between February and July of this year 180,000 euros corresponding to the 2010 financial year were paid, that the debt has not increased since then and that they are working on a payment plan to be determined on November 30.
The Consortium points out that the surveillance of the beaches "is not a competence of the Cabildo, not even of the Consortium, despite the fact that it has been assumed as such, and it will be studied with the city councils to provide these means to the beaches of Lanzarote, which will be protected as until now, in the event that said organization chooses to withdraw from them".
S.G. / ACN Press
