Saturday, November 17, 2012

A different viewpoint

The socialist party in Bigastro, in a press conference yesterday, criticised the mayor, Charo Bañuls by saying that the dismissal of dozens of council employees had actually increased the municipal debt because of the compensation they had to pay.

Raúl Valerio Medina cited the 70,000 euros paid to the cleaners and the 200,000 euros owed to the ex-employees at the nursery school, Bigastrin. He went on to say that they didn’t yet know how much compensation would have to be paid to the other 30 workers who had also been dismissed.

The socialist group also took the opportunity to criticise the way that services in the town had been cut for example in sport, culture, adult education and the closure of the 24 hours emergency department at the medical centre. In fact, according to the socialists, the only area where cuts have not been made is in the salaries that the PP councillors pay themselves.

Medina accuses the PP of scaremongering, a tactic which he says is designed to instil fear into the local people. He claims that, talk of bankruptcy and of the savings that need to be made, have misled people into accepting drastic cuts. For his part, the councillor for finance, Antonio Gonzalez claims to have made savings of half a million euros.  

Medina may argue that the cuts made may not have been the right way to go about turning around the finances of Bigastro but he cannot deny that drastic measures had to be taken given the enormous debt the town faced. You can’t help but wonder just what the socialists would have done if they had been returned to power. 

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