Despite the population tripling in size during the Easter period, Orihuela Costa will not have the usual supplement of street cleaning workers. It will have to make do with the same resources as in it employs in January, during the low season.
However, to keep the streets clean in Orihuela City, an additional 12 labourers have been temporarily engaged until 7 April, after the Holy Week celebrations have been concluded.
The Cabo Roig y Lomas Neighbourhood Association already predicts that “there will be serious deficiencies on the beaches, dirty streets and with the collection of rubbish.”
Last year, eleven additional workers were sent to the coast to reinforce the service, and they stayed until the summer. Ten further labourers also joined to work during the evenings.
You could be excused if you thought that there was no such position as the councillor for Orihuela Costa, as despite holding the position of first deputy mayor, he allows the Orihuela Council to ride ‘roughshod’ over the rights of the electorate that he represents.
Not only are these attacks without comprehension or common decency but they are an assault on reason. Does the arrival of residents and tourists to the coast in massive numbers not deserve fair treatment with an adequate reinforcement of resources so that services are able to be maintained at minimally acceptable quality?
“This government team, especially its mayor Pepe Vegara, and the councillor of the Coast, Manuel Mestre, is deeply disappointing the residents, due to their manifest inability to correctly manage the basic services required in this part of the municipality,” adds the neighbourhood association.
Even Luisa Boné, councillor of the municipal group Cs, has denounced the “lack of work and management of councillors Agustina Rodríguez and Rocío Ortuño, from the Departments of Human Resources and Urban Cleaning, respectively.”
She added, “We do not understand what they are doing in Human Resources and we would like someone to explain why only 10 workers have been hired for a month to cover the Holy Week services in Orihuela city, why not a single worker to Orihuela Costa”.
