The Administrative Court of Public Contracts of the Autonomous Community of the Canary Islands "has confirmed that the mayor broke the law by calling the tender for the garbage collection service without previously taking the specifications to the Plenary." This has been revealed by the Renovating Movement of Tinajo, which recalls that it already warned about it three weeks ago.
"Our suspicions have been confirmed and the situation is even more serious than we feared," said the president and councilor of the party, Antonio Morales, who believes that "what has become clear after the Plenary held last Friday is that if the mayor was hiding documentation from them, it is because he has a lot to hide with this matter.”
On the one hand, Morales has clarified that it was the Court that declared the procedure "concluded", contrary to what Jesús Machín had been saying, who maintained that it was a municipal decision in response to the appeal filed by a company. "He had told us that there was no resolution, but it does exist, and it is the one that forces him to start the entire procedure from scratch," explained the councilman, who affirms that the Public Contracts Court "detected numerous irregularities and even that many laws had been broken.”
Among other things, he points out that this resolution confirms what the party had already denounced: that the mayor could not approve and publish the specifications by decree, and that they had to have gone to the Plenary first, because it is the contracting body. In addition, there are "other irregularities found by the Court, such as that not even a feasibility study was carried out before calling the tender, which is mandatory; and that there were numerous errors and inaccuracies in the specifications", with data that did not match. “In one it says that the workers earn one salary and in another it says a totally different one. And like that case, tons,” explains Antonio Morales.
“That is what we suspected: after being more than a year with an expired contract, without calling the tender and maintaining a non-compliant company in an irregular situation, the mayor got in a hurry and what we knew was going to happen has happened,” insists the councilman.
To this, the president of the Renovating Movement of Tinajo also adds another “cowardice” of the mayor, who has tried to blame the secretary for what happened. “It is incredible that he never admits mistakes. It seems that he is the most correct person in the world, but even if the secretary is somewhat to blame, he is the political leader. And from the opposition we had warned him that what he was doing was doing wrong and he did not listen,” he questioned.
The service would have been provided without legal coverage
On the other hand, the MRT warns of new irregularities that they have found and that are "even more serious, since they indicate that the service would have been provided for a long time without any type of legal coverage."
In this regard, Morales recalls that the original contract with Hernández Bello had the possibility of extension, but one of the legal reports to which they have now had access confirms that this extension was never processed. “The surprise is that there was no extension. There was no document that speaks of the extension being executed,” he warns. “Since June 23, 2019, when the contract definitively expired, it is not clear what figure was used to keep Hernández Bello providing the service,” he adds.
It was not until July 31, 2020, more than a year later, when a new contract was signed again, using the health crisis to take advantage of the emergency route, as the MRT also denounced at the time. Later, another was added to that three-month contract and now a third has arrived, which was also taken to the Plenary last Friday, for a period of nine more months.
“Now we understand why the mayor has not provided us with the file that we have requested on repeated occasions. Now we understand the secrecy and we suspect that he has things with this company, because everything that is happening is not understood, causing serious damage to the municipality of Tinajo,” denounces Antonio Morales.
“It is not understood that a company that did not comply with the contract it had in force and that is not providing a service in conditions, is given two emergency contracts and now a third, for which it will continue to receive about 20,000 euros per month,” adds the councilman. “That is only done by the mayor with the public money of the municipality of Tinajo, because I don't think that in his house with his money he would do such a barbarity,” he warns.
In addition, from the Renovating Movement of Tinajo they consider that both the two previous contracts and this new one are irregular, because according to the legal report there was no report on the extension. “Since there is no extension, in our opinion these emergency contracts are irregular and we made it known in the Plenary,” says Antonio Morales.
“A mayor who fills his mouth saying that he wants the best for his people and that he is fighting for his people, what he is doing is the opposite. He is putting the municipality in the insular and Canarian news for not listening to reasons, for not listening to the opposition, for not complying with the laws in force and because he has many things to hide. And the proof is when he is not transparent and hides the documentation from the opposition, also failing to comply with the law,” laments the spokesman for the MRT, who warns that the mayor “is causing the municipality a serious economic and image problem, and in some cases it will have very complicated consequences in the future, due to his stubbornness and his bad deeds.”
Finally, Antonio Morales has also questioned “the forms" of the mayor in the Plenaries and in particular in the one held last Friday to address this issue: “The lack of respect for the opposition and, above all, trying to prevent us from speaking or taking away our word continuously, does not seem to us to be from a democratic person. He is obliged to respect the opposition, because we are also elected by the citizens and we have the right to speak and defend our positions. He is systematically trying to avoid it and in the last Plenary he tried it on several occasions, only so that his inefficiency and his mismanagement would not be seen.”
