The deputy of the Socialist Parliamentary Group for Fuerteventura, Manuel Hernández, has accused the Government of the Canary Islands this Wednesday during the celebration of the Plenary Session of the Regional Chamber of generating a “Dantean panorama” by discriminating “unprecedentedly” against Lanzarote and Fuerteventura in the fuel bonus.
Hernández has intervened in an interpellation by the Socialist Group to the Minister of Finance and Relations with the European Union on the measures to be adopted by the Canarian Executive to extend the bonus to the final price of fuel to the islands of Fuerteventura and Lanzarote, while showing his support for the bonus in the green islands.
“This procedure is unacceptable and generates comparative grievances between the non-capital islands”, he highlighted. In this sense, he recalled the Non-Law Proposal (PNL) presented by the Socialist Group in the Regional Chamber to extend these bonuses proportionally to Fuerteventura and Lanzarote, quantifying them at least 40% of those planned for the green islands, which was rejected by the groups that support the Government and by VOX.
The socialist deputy has described as a “lamentable exercise” that Coalición Canaria plagiarized this initiative in February, but with the condition of preparing a study to verify if market conditions justified the extension of the bonuses applied to the green islands. “Then the counselor spoke of the creation of a price observatory, and we wonder what for, if the Canarian Institute of Statistics and the ISTAC are already available”, he highlighted.
For Hernández, the intention of the Canarian Government is to “buy time” so that the year passes, the bonus to the green islands expires and the problem “disappears”.
In addition, he criticized that the Canarian Government "aggravates" the inhabitants of Fuerteventura and Lanzarote and that they are not “capable of ensuring” that the 20-cent bonus effectively reaches the pockets of the citizens of El Hierro, La Gomera and La Palma. “More than four months after requesting it, Fuerteventura and Lanzarote suffer unprecedented discrimination, and that is the responsibility of the CC and PP government”, Hernández indicated.
The socialist deputy recalled that Fuerteventura and Lanzarote "pay the most expensive fuel in all of the Canary Islands", and that this Government has created a “third insularity” in nine months, to turn the citizens of these islands into Canarians with fewer rights than the rest.
Hernández has demanded that the Canarian Government “abandon the excuses” and not generate a Canary Islands “at three speeds”, in addition to asking them to apply policies to alleviate the “double insularity” for all the capital islands and that they “do not marginalize” Lanzarote and Fuerteventura.
“We demand that you do not treat the residents of Majorera and Majorero, the residents of Conejera and Conejero, as third-class citizens; we demand once again that you apply the fuel bonus in favor of students, workers, retirees, companies, the self-employed of Fuerteventura and Lanzarote, and that you apply this measure not capriciously, but balanced and weighted, because the Canarians of the eastern islands do not have fewer rights than those of the rest of the islands”, he added.
