Despite the mayor of Orihuela, Pepe Vegara, and the councillor for sport, Victor Sigaenza, saying that both the management service of Orihuela’s sports facilities and all staff wages are guaranteed, more than 130 workers belonging to the company are holding a series of protests because of the nonpayment of their salaries.
This is a situation that has been dragging on since the beginning of June when the difficult economic situation of the company came to light, so much so that in other municipalities where it has a concession it has been forced to cede the contracts immediately.
On Tuesday the Orihuela Council, which owes Clequali more than a million euros, ordered this Tuesday the payment of the invoices for January and February, while at the same time beginning begun the procedures to pay March, April and May with a legal advance.
In Orihuela, the company has been providing the service without a contract since it expired more than a year ago, which only allows the bills to be paid after approval by the Advisory Legal Council.
The Sports Councillor also said, that the new contract will go out to tender within a matter of a few days, which has still not occurred.
According to the Mayor, “once the January and February invoices were sent to the Advisory Legal Council and the report came stating that they had to be paid immediately, the procedures for their payment were initiated. However, we received an embargo from the Tax Agency for 751,000 euros, which obviously prevents direct payment to the company Clequali. This led us to have to talk to the Tax Agency to explain the circumstances.”
This means that the staff, for the time being, have still not collected their payrolls for half of May, while the payroll for June is also up in the air.
For this reason, despite the payment order, Clequali staff have decided in an extraordinary general assembly that they will protest every Tuesday of July in front of the company’s offices in Orihuela and in front of the Town Hall to demand the outstanding payment of their salaries and information about the security of their futures.
This situation is now putting at risk not only the payment of wages to the workers of the company, but also the sports service in Orihuela, such as the municipal swimming pools, in the middle of the children’s summer holidays.
