The requests of coastal residents to clear building waste from their streets now appears to have materialised into something tangible, although by it is no means anywhere enough to resolve the problem completely. On Wednesday the Orihuela Council put out to tender a contract valued at 71,923 euros (VAT included) to remove construction waste across the Orihuela Costa and other points spread across the 24 districts and the outskirts of Orihuela city.
However, the Cabo Roig and Lomas Residents’ Association and CLARO have both said that the new contract only covers “just over half of the waste that is scattered around on their streets.”
Both organisations have expressed their discontent with the street cleaning with AVCRL saying, “Although the Town Hall, after making all kinds of excuses for month after month, is finally assuming its responsibilities, only 34,850 euros of the 72k will be allocated to the coast.”
They also condemn the fact that the list only includes thirty of the 51 identified dumping points that were recognised in conjunction with an exhaustive study in which they involved the Local Police.
“Once again, the Orihuela City Council lacks a global plan, a comprehensive vision of the problem, since the lack of a permanent ecopark on the coast, which should have been operational at the beginning of this summer, will see the problem simply repeat itself in the same areas, once the current waste has been removed,” they said.
They also requested an awareness campaign on the coast throughout the year and more sanctions and police control, otherwise, they warn, “this expenditure will only be a band-aid on what is a serious wound, one that will simply reappear.”
Given that the contract will take several months to award, some residents, at their own expense, have decided to clean up their own streets. In the La Florida residential area, where a group of residents have purchased the use of two roadside containers, many of them spent all day Friday cleaning up and depositing all the construction waste abandoned in Calle Aries and Calle Victoria, according to the former coordinator of the pedanias and leader of CLARO, Antonio Cerdán.
“Although the residents note that Calle Aries is included in the municipal contract, given that work will not begin for another 2 or 3 months, they have decided to start now,” said Cerdán.
This is not the first time that this situation has occurred, and, in fact, platforms linked to the independence movements across the coast have already highlighted many other occasions where street cleaning has been carried out by the residents themselves.
