The PSOE of Lanzarote has denounced this Wednesday the unprecedented waste of the island government presided over by Oswaldo Betancort, which has already spent more than 110,000 euros on allowances and travel only in 2024. "We are facing the most expensive president in the history of Lanzarote," said the spokesperson for the Socialist Group in the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Ariagona González, who accuses the government group of "draining public accounts" while the island is going through serious social problems such as the water crisis, the housing emergency or tourist saturation.
The socialist spokesperson has stated that "while the people of Lanzarote suffer water cuts, healthcare waiting lists and an unprecedented housing emergency, the president is only adding official trips charged to the island budget. Texas and New York have become symbols of Oswaldo Betancort's wastefulness."
"To these destinations are added many other official trips charged to the island budget, including allowances, hotels and travel that, for the most part, respond more to propaganda interests than to a true institutional agenda," González continued.
From the PSOE, they recall that Oswaldo Betancort began the legislature starring in an embarrassing controversy by trying to set himself a higher salary than that of the President of the Government of Spain, and did not hesitate to use public resources to launch a survey asking the people of Lanzarote if they thought that salary was okay. "It was a mockery of the collective intelligence of this island," says Ariagona González.
The socialist spokesperson recalls that the current government of the Cabildo has also broken records in spending on advisors, trusted positions and general coordinators, maximizing the structure of trusted personnel charged to public coffers. "They have turned the administration into a personal fiefdom, placing supporters without regard to the economic cost or the efficiency of the government," she denounces.
González warns that the PSOE will continue to monitor every euro that is allocated to purposes other than the general interest. "Oswaldo Betancort has lost his sense of reality: he travels, charges and spends as if Lanzarote were his, while the people of Lanzarote suffer the consequences of his disastrous management every day," she concludes.
