The works council of Home Santa Ritawhich represents 423 workers, and the unions UGT, CCOO and Intersindical Canaria demand the immediate resignation of the managing director of the largest residence for the elderly Canary IslandsTomás Villar, whom they consider solely responsible for the problems suffered by this residence and the main obstacle to their resolution.
The Company Committee and all the unions that make it up also request to be represented on the Board of Trustees that is in charge of managing this nursing home, in which about 500 elderly and dependents reside currently. They also consider it essential that both the Council of Tenerife such as the Government of the Canary Islands form part of this board of trustees, since the foundation has 374 places arranged with public financing, for which the foundation receives more than 450,000 euros a month, almost 6 million euros a year.
The president of the Santa Rita Company Committee, Jesús Ángel Suárez, defended the professionalism and dedication of the workers of the home, “who have been affected by the situations experienced, being in the eye of the hurricane, despite the fact that they have always acted in a professional manner and established an almost family bond with each resident.”
The head of the Unit of the UGT Federation of Services, Alexis Rodríguez, recalled that Villar has been responsible in April for the delay in the collection of the workers’ payroll for 15 days “despite the fact that the foundation had financial solvency”, and stressed that “with this interlocutor it is impossible to get anything clear”. In his opinion, Santa Rita and its workers cannot remain on the sidelines of the change in the care model advocated by the councilfor which he considers essential the entry of the administrations and the staff in the board of trustees that decides the future of the foundation and the home.
The legal adviser of Intersindical Canaria, Fran Baute, accused Villar of “using the workers as human shields” and remarked that the union’s position is “unanimous and firm” in the conviction that “to reverse the current situation and end obscurantism and lack of transparency and information to public institutions, everything goes through this resignation”.
In Baute’s opinion, nothing that has been done in Santa Rita since that health intervention at the end of 2020 “It has been done by an act of contrition by the director, but thanks to the imposition from outside. He has acted out of obligation, not out of conviction.”
The general secretary of the Federation of Public Services of the UGT in Tenerife, Juan Carlos Viñas, defended that when in December 2020 they presented the complaint that led to the health intervention of the center and the opening of proceedings in the Prosecutor’s Office, “we probably help save lives”. And he blamed the problems of scabies, malnutrition or dehydration detected then in some residents “to the brutal overload of work” and poor organization of the center by its director.
The managing director of Hogar Santa Rita, Tomás Villar, is immersed as an investigator in a judicial process opened in a court of Puerto de la Cruzafter a complaint from the Prosecutor’s Office, to clarify whether crimes of ill-treatment have been committed or even reckless homicide during the management of the home in the worst moments of the pandemic.
