The Renovating Movement of Tinajo considers unacceptable the management that the mayor is still doing of the municipality's garbage collection contract, which expired more than a year ago and has now launched a tender in breach of legal procedures. “We wonder what he has to hide, because there are more and more doubts and more reasons to suspect,” warns the president and councilor of the party in the municipality, Antonio Morales.
“After a year of not having done anything, we do not understand the rush at the last minute and this secrecy,” denounces the councilman, who recalls that the mayor ended up publishing the specifications of that tender by decree and without previously taking them to the Plenary, despite the fact that the law obliges him to do so when it comes to contracts of more than four years. In addition, he stresses that this publication on the public sector contracting platform of the Ministry took place on October 2, when on the 7th he had already called an ordinary Plenary session to which the specifications could have been taken. “After a year of total inactivity, allowing a company that was incurring in constant breaches to continue providing the service, he suddenly got in a hurry and decided to break the law for not waiting five days,” questions Morales.
Finally, in the face of opposition complaints, in that session the mayor announced that he would convene an extraordinary Plenary session “to approve something that he had already published by decree.” In addition, he made that call at 8 a.m. last Friday, to be held four and a half hours later. “You cannot act with such irresponsibility when we are talking about the largest public contract of the City Council,” denounces Antonio Morales, who explains that his party could not even attend the session due to the short time they were given with the call.
“We regret the lack of transparency of the mayor, with this and with so many other issues, and we regret that he is breaking the law. We are very concerned that it has become a habit on his part not to give information either to the municipality of Tinajo or to the opposition, and to do everything in darkness,” adds the spokesman for the Renovating Movement of Tinajo, who has urged the mayor to “redirect his ways and attitudes, which are not at all democratic,” and to “comply with the laws in force.” “We as the opposition are not going to overlook this type of action,” warned Antonio Morales, who believes that in addition to acting with a lack of transparency, there are also “acts that are at least unethical.”
“Who knows what things will be behind that whole contract,” asks the councilman, who recalls that they have been demanding that a new tender be called for more than a year and fears that there has been something more than “negligence” on the part of the mayor. “Because it is not understood how you can spend a year without taking out something that you know is so basic and that you knew was going to expire. And even more so when the company that had the expired contract was in breach and has even been a week without collecting garbage,” he insists. However, instead of taking measures against the company, what Jesús Machín did was to continue approving extensions of that contract, one of them even using the state of alarm. "And when he could no longer maintain that situation for longer and has been forced to call a tender, he has done so surrounded by secrecy, trying to prevent the opposition from knowing the specifications until the last moment. In fact, although he had promised to give them to the opposition beforehand so that they could study them and make contributions, the mayor broke his word again and what is worse, he did not even comply with the law, which required him to have taken them to the Plenary before their publication. With these attitudes, we can only think that he has something to hide,” insists Morales.
