The council is to reactivate the public company Surpal (Sociedad Urbanizadora del Polígono Industrial Puente Alto de Orihuela), which has been without any activity since 2015, providing it with a new task, that of dealing with waste management in the municipality.
The service has been municipalised since 2012 but now the Orihuela government team of PP and Vox has said that a public company model will be assumed as in other municipalities, such as Guardamar.
The board of directors of the public company will be chaired by the mayor, Pepe Vegara, and will have eight councillors, one from each political group (PP, Vox, PSOE, Ciudadanos and Cambiemos) and three other members who will be appointed by the board.
The mayor has already commissioned a report on the effectiveness and efficiency of the service to decide whether it is viable to introduce 100% municipal management or whether to opt for a private company with mixed management.
Of course, the City Council would not be willing to lose control of the service, so if public-private collaboration were chosen, the largest participation would be municipal.
What the report will reveal is whether the Council has the necessary investment capacity to carry out the Local Waste Management Plan, which will cost 20 million euro.
Surpal was created in 1982 to develop the industrial estate and in 1993 the statutes were modified. In 2008, the PP reactivated it, initially for developing projects such as public parking and street development. There was another modification of the statutes in 2015 but since then, nothing.
