The Teguise City Council approved this Tuesday to execute a ruling that annulled the awarding of the municipality's garbage collection service, which took place almost six years ago. The ruling forces the file to be taken back to the moment of evaluating the offers, although, as specified by the City Council, the current concessionaire will continue to provide the service for the time being until the tender is resolved again, which was denounced by another of the applicants.
The garbage service was awarded in 2013 to the company Cespa, of the Ferrovial group, for 20.5 million and for a period of 12 years. However, the award was annulled in 2017 by the Contentious-Administrative Court Number 2 of Las Palmas, which upheld the appeal filed by Ayagaures Medioambiente. That ruling became final last March, when the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands rejected an appeal by the City Council, and in November the Court ordered the execution of the ruling, which is the process that the City Council has now initiated.
This implies taking back the file and re-evaluating the offers, since the ruling considers that that evaluation did not conform to the criteria established in the tender specifications.
"The mayor's blunders will cost millions in compensation"
"The blunders of the mayor of Teguise, Oswaldo Betancort, and his government group of Coalición Canaria will cost Teguise millions in compensation for damages for the garbage collection companies," warned Unidos por Lanzarote, which after the Plenary has sent a statement criticizing this "new slip-up" of the Government of Oswaldo Betancort.
In the plenary session, according to Unidos por Lanzarote, the opposition "abstained in the vote" and "criticized that the Government of Oswaldo Betancort is asking them for an official position when they have not even provided them with the judicial ruling, which could have new millionaire consequences against the municipality, since it is expected that the City Council, in case the result of the tender is different from the current one, will have to face large and millionaire compensations, on the one hand to the company that has been providing the service until now and, on the other hand, to the one that challenged the tender and to which the courts have given the reason".
"The mayor has relied on the procedures and tenders to justify the most absolute municipal inaction in these four years of absolute majority and the previous four", question from Unidos por Lanzarote, which states that "it would seem that the rest of the municipalities of Lanzarote and all the Canary Islands are not affected by regulations or procedures and that Teguise is the only one that is subject to the rules of the game".
"It is inconceivable that with the majority government group that the Teguise City Council has, this mayor has not been able to carry out either the Costa Teguise football field, or the project to improve the Paseo de Las Cucharas in Costa Teguise and that he is not even able to tender and award a service as basic for the citizen as garbage collection", criticizes the president of Unidos por Lanzarote, Laureano Álvarez.
