The PSOE candidate for mayor of Torrevieja, Bárbara Soler, has blamed the current mayor, and candidate to renew the post on behalf of the PP, Eduardo Dolón, for the delay in the rehabilitation works of the IES Libertas school, which, rather than being simply a political campaign message, is something the socialist candidate can speak of with intimate experience, as she had been a teacher in the school before embarking on her political career.
Soler has stated that until now, she had decided to keep her teaching work separate from the politic one, but since the condition of the centre is a sensitive issue, that affects teachers, parents and students, it cannot be tolerated for Eduardo Dolón to say without blushing, that “since the Conselleria has not taken charge of fixing the educational centres, the City Council is going to do it through the Edificant Plan”.
Currently, there are delays in the reforms and rehabilitation of several centres of the locality depending on the Edificant Plan of the Generalitat Valenciana. This plan consists of the autonomous government providing certain budget to the municipalities that request to join in, to reform and rehabilitate their educational centres. The operation is as follows: the schools notify the municipalities that they need rehabilitation works, and the councils then request the Conselleria to adhere to the plan to carry them out. Conselleria finances the works, and the council executes them through what is called a “delegation of powers” of the Conselleria. That is, the council approves in a plenary session to take charge of a competency that belongs to the Conselleria, and the process is started.
For the Conselleria to approve the petition, it is necessary to attach a series of supporting documents of the necessity of the works and a value report that is elaborated based on public economic modules to be applied to the works in each specific case. These values change depending on several factors, such as the variation of the prices of the materials or working hours. When new modules are approved, they are published.
The first time that the plenary session approved the delegation of powers was on February 12, 2022, but the Conselleria warned Torrevieja council that the values that had to be taken into account in the value report had changed months ago. That is, there had been a change in the economic modules but nobody in the town hall had noticed it.
The issue was not brought back to the committees prior to the plenary session until October 21, when the opposition, again, pointed out that there had been another modification in the evaluation criteria, and that the report being presented was therefore already obsolete. This event caused it to be withdrawn from the agenda of that plenary session.
Finally, an attempt was made to approve it in the plenary session at the end of January, but Eduardo Dolón was not in the town hall at that time, and the corresponding delegation was not made so that the deputy mayors could act in his name, so the commissions prior to the plenary session were annulled by operation of law.
After all these obstacles, the delegation of powers to the council to carry out the works in the IES nº1 Libertas, was included and approved in the extraordinary plenary session of February 3, 2023, based on the latest values published by the Conselleria. That is, the delay in the approval of these rehabilitation works accumulated by the mismanagement of Eduardo Dolón, was one year minus nine days. 356 days that have also meant an important cost overrun (up to 800,000 euro) associated with delays in the project and carrying out the new reports.
Therefore, from the Socialist Party we cannot accept that attempt to hide the deficient management in terms of education, “Dolón stands now, and without any shame, as the saviour of the educational centres of Torrevieja, when he is, in reality, the one to blame for the problem”.
Similar events have happened in relation to other schools in the locality, which brings to light the poor management of the PP and “Eduardo Dolón’s commitment with quality public education, fails”, states the teacher and socialist candidate.
