It seems to be a regular occurrence year on year, this great town of Orihuela Costa is without many of its familiar sights including the Chirunguitos and the services they offer, due to a fiasco with the contracts yet again. They, and the services they offer, are a badly missed attraction.
Now that the elections have come and gone and a new government formed, followed by the allocation of responsibilities to the elected councillors, they obviously needed a few weeks to find their feet.
That should have taken us into July, the beginning of the summer season for the tourists, which was also the beginning of the holiday season for the town hall civil servants. How bizarre is that?
As such nothing could be resolved, or even started, until August, not least of which was the tender process for one of our most valuable assets, the beach bars.
At that stage the process would have taken several weeks, so it was goodbye to the summer season. Any sensible businessman would look after his most valuable asset so, had it been up to PIOC we would have worked hard to get the bars open, up and running, so that all the services were in order for the 900,000 tourists descending on the town of Orihuela Costa for their vacations. Now, however, we understand that, at the very earliest, the bars will not be operating until Easter 2024.
Of course the staff had to be laid off, there was lost revenue to the businesses supplying the bars, local entertainers lost income as did many ancillary companies, and, as well the damaging image portrayed of the municipal council and the coast, there was also the lost income to the municipal budget.
We then saw several of our ‘blue flag’ beaches closed because of sewage contamination, which PIOC had highlighted on several occasions, all ignored by Orihuela. Even so, just 2 weeks ago we all saw the ridiculous situation with the Valencian Community Tourist Board awarding a certificate of tourist merit to the Orihuela Council.
We now come on to the rubbish, which Orihuela Costa is overwhelmed with and with the removal of which the town hall simply can’t manage. As the coast slowly sinks there is both an acute shortage of bins and an increasing number of bins that need replacing. There are insufficient trucks on the road to remove the waste, and a collection service that is becoming increasingly random.
Other areas of Spain have greatly reduced the amount of fly tipping, through investment, by increasing fines, and with designated mobile police patrols searching out and catching fly tippers in action, so it can be done. There just needs to be a greater commitment from Orihuela to do so.
