If you’re a driver in the Orihuela Costa you could be forgiven for thinking potholes have become a design feature of our local roads.
Not only are they are getting worse, because we’re not spending enough to maintain them, but until the council and the contractor resolve their differences, despite the promised million euro budget, they are unlikely to get any better.
Currently we have the ridiculous situation whereby the council is threatening the contractor, Zaplana Caselles, with a 126,634 euro fine for breach of contract, while at the same time owing the same contractor the sum of 350,000 euros in unpaid invoices, for work undertaken between September and May.
The reason for the proposed fine is that the contractor has not built the 1,174 square metre warehouse and storage area, office area, staff changing rooms and toilets that were included in the tender specifications. Although this is a serious breach, it is not enough to terminate the contract, with the councillor for infrastructures, Víctor Valverde (PP), proposing the a penalty of a 126,634 euro fine instead.
So it would appear that until this impasse is resolved, the invoices paid and the warehouse built, there will be no meaningful improvement to the Orihuela Costa roads.
While the government team is no longer the same, the problem is, and has been since the start of the contract in 2020, a lack of supply of materials that are provided by the council and the unacceptable delay in payments.
The state of the Orihuela Costa roads is one of the issues that attracts the most complaints from residents.
Indeed AVCRL, the Asociación de vecinos Cabo Roig y Lomas-Orihuela Costa, has again written to the mayor calling for urgent repairs to Calles Carlos Torres, Orihuela and Torrevieja, in the Torrezenia urbanisation, asphalting costs to be met from the 60,000 euros allocated in the participatory budgets that were approved in 2019.
The roads are in a regrettable state, and in recent weeks they have deteriorated even more, very much in line with a similar worsening in the management of the area by this council.
Currently our politicians seem to do little more than apply Band-Aids at best, as they endlessly postpone acting on the many problems that we see declining on an almost daily basis on the coast.
