The Tinajo City Council approved last Friday to extend the garbage contract with the current concessionaire, Hernández Bello, in a plenary session in which the PSOE considers that the mayor, Jesús Machín, "obstructed the work of the opposition." According to the spokesperson for the socialists, Begoña Hernández, the extension was taken to the plenary session without "said vote being raised at any point on the agenda" and without the opposition having all the information.
"We arrived at a plenary session without knowing what we were going to vote on," Hernández pointed out, who assured that the documentation that was delivered to them only alluded to the appeal that a company presented before the Administrative Court of Public Contracts of the Autonomous Community of the Canary Islands against the bidding process initiated by the City Council to award the garbage collection service of the municipality, more than a year after the contract with the company Hernández Bello expired. An appeal that led the Council to withdraw the bidding process, with the mayor acknowledging that there were "errors" in the specifications.
However, the PSOE spokesperson stated that what was taken to the plenary session was "the vote on the special extension for the same company, Hernández Bello, to continue with the service for nine more months for 200,000 euros." Thus, she stated that they are still "quite astonished and unhappy to see that the agenda hardly coincided with the documentation" that had been delivered to the opposition.
Criticizes Machín's "inappropriate" attitudes and his "authoritarian tone"
"The truth is that it is a great coincidence that, within the file, the legal report on the only issue that the government group intended to address was not found and that said vote was not raised at any point on the agenda," said Begoña Hernández, who insisted that "the PSOE did not have complete information on the file," which she believes, in addition to "obstructing the work of the opposition," also "curtails the right to information."
"In fact, something very curious happens, and that is that the lawyer goes to the plenary session that day to read us said report, which we lacked. Even the mayor lends me his printed report and takes it away from me in the middle of the intervention, at all times curtailing our word. He took our word away from us at every moment," Hernández indicated, who described Jesús Machín's attitudes in the plenary session as "inappropriate," from whom she also highlighted that he was "quite nervous."
Begoña Hernández stated that "at all times" they told the mayor that "for reasons of order, it was not appropriate" to vote on the extension of the contract. "But he, with a rather authoritarian tone typical of a person who perhaps, having been there for so long, thinks that everything belongs to him and that he orders and commands what he has to say, left us little room," she pointed out.
"We have already seen many uncollected containers over the weekend"
For this reason, Hernández explained that the PSOE voted against it. And it is that, although she indicated that "it is true that the lawyer says that the entire process is guaranteed," the socialists have "doubts after the entire procedure that has been given to this day."
In addition, the PSOE spokesperson expressed her "concern" that, by extending the contract with Hernández Bello, the "breaches of the past" will be committed again and that the citizens of Tinajo will once again be surrounded by garbage and with overflowing containers.
"We were already seeing many containers that had not been collected over the weekend," the councilor stated, who pointed out that, in this sense, in the plenary session they demanded guarantees from the government group, asking that "in the event of the first breach, the appropriate measures be taken."
"We hope that this government group, which has not lived up to the circumstances, will be from these days onwards, because 200,000 euros for nine months is a lot of money for the Tinajo City Council," added Begoña Hernández, who believes that "this year the garbage in Tinajo has been quite expensive." "We would like to know how much money the public institution has invested in this service because, apart from the garbage collection company, we have seen how many other companies in the municipality, with their own trucks, collect garbage day in and day out, which carries an additional cost," she questioned.
About the errors in the specifications and the new tender
Regarding the "errors" in the specifications of the tender to award the garbage service, the PSOE spokesperson stated that no explanations were given in the plenary session either. "But we have the allegations and we were able to verify them," the socialist pointed out, however.
In this regard, Hernandez pointed out that "there are more than 10" allegations from the company that appealed the tender and stated that "the first was that they had not gone through the plenary session, that it had been done by decree" as the opposition denounced, despite the fact that Jesús Machín denied that this was one of the reasons why the tender was challenged. "Many others were omissions of laws, of the budgetary law that did not present the maximums and minimums..." she added.
On the other hand, although the mayor of Tinajo announced that the bidding process would be started again, commissioning an external company to prepare the specifications, Begoña Hernández pointed out that finally "it seems that the same technicians are going to be the ones" who make the new specifications. "That is what the mayor commented in the plenary session, and it will be the City Council's lawyer who will have the powers in contracting," she pointed out.
