The Cabo Roig and Lomas Neighbours Association (AVCRL) has analysed the manifesto’s published by the coalition parties PP and Vox prior to the elections in May last year.
Despite the mayor of Orihuela, Pepe Vegara, saying that he is very satisfied with the performance of his government team, in recent interviews featured on Spanish Radio and in the press, AVCRL concludes that “the commitments fulfilled to date, 13 months after the elections, are minimal,” representing only 6% of the total of the 84 proposals included in the electoral program of the PP.
They suggest that, in view of the large number of commitments not fulfilled so far, they consider that, for the moment, the PP slogan used in the election run up – “An Orihuela, that you want to see” – could be replaced by “Orihuela Costa as we do not want to see.”
The PP traveling companion, Vox, is not far behind: “Almost all of Vox’s electoral commitments are unfulfilled.” Albeit the deputy mayor and Vox leader, Manuel Mestre, has established himself in the Playa Flamenca town hall as Councillor for the Coast, little else has been achieved.
However the association did confirm that four objectives have been achieved: the new budgets – although with little room for manoeuvre, to introduce them and make any real achievements before the end of the year- the creation of a tourism office in the shopping centre La Zenia Boulevard, the work centre for the Urban Solid Waste Collection Service, a specific council department for the Coast and a commission for fiestas on the coast.
But it also points to 14 ongoing commitments which have seen little or no progress, the demanded plan for asphalting and resurfacing local roads, the pedestrian footpath across the AP-7 bridge, the improvement of parks and children’s areas and the incorporation of outstanding services in the Emergency Centre, the flood plan, the Campoamor purification plant in Lomas de Cabo Roig, the fixed ecopark, the third school or the second health centre and many more.
A spokesman for AVCRL said that there are many residents who have the feeling that the Orihuela Costa Council has not made any progress with regard to the improvements that are needed in the management of basic services, and that, “the quality of life of the people living on the coast has not improved at all,” he adds.
You only have to look around, the association states, “the beaches are poorly cared for, some are still without toilets or chirunguitos, the roads are full of potholes, many with very poor vertical and horizontal signage, which are not properly attended by the maintenance contract; the palm trees have not been cut for more than two years, and the gardens and children’s areas, remain completely abandoned, while public lighting is also poorly maintained.”
All these services, they state, are exclusively the responsibility of Mestre, and “are not working well.” To add this is “the deplorable state of road cleaning and waste collection that we suffer, with the coast turned into a giant dump, in the face of the refusal of those responsible for the service to carry out the removal of rubble,” as well as the ” inability ” to provide the area with the replacement of waste containers and machinery approved in September last year, from a budget surplus.
After the first year of his term, they conclude, the Council should expedite the procedures of those commitments made to residents which need complex administrative processes and long deadlines for their implementation. Otherwise, they regret, there is a risk that they will not be able to be achieved within this mandate, which ends at the end of May 2027.
