The Isla Baja Consortium hopes to award before the end of the year the new regional garbage collection service Y waste management in Garachico, El Tanque, Los Silos and Buenavista del Norte for an annual amount of around 700,000 euros. An objective that has been worked on since 2011. Two companies have submitted to the contest, which aspire to win a five-year contract that could bring them about 3.5 million euros in exchange for assuming the collection of garbage generated by a joint population of some 17,000 neighbors. The president of this entity, formed by the council and the four city councils of the region, is the Silense José Gregorio Pérez Medina (PSOE), who trusts that this week the tenders for the contest will be opened.
The municipalities of El Tanque and Garachico pooled theirs garbage collection services in 2008 to lower costs. In October 2011, it was approved to extend this joint service to Buenavista del Norte and Los Silos, after discussions within the Isla Baja Consortium. That agreement from 11 years ago is about to become a reality if nothing goes wrong in the final stage of the public tender.
«Next May 11, the opening of tenders for the offers of the two companies that submitted to the tender for the joint service of waste collection. It is probably the most important service that the municipalities have delegated to the Consortium to date and we believe that it will mark a before and after. We hope that the award will close this year and that the service can start at the end of this 2022 or, at the latest, at the beginning of 2023″, Pérez Medina advances.
The tender continues its course, although it has suffered a slight delay due to the retirement of the secretary of the City Council of Garachico, who also served as secretary of the Isla Baja Consortium. “We hope that this week the tenders can be opened and that in the coming months we can complete the entire procedure for awarding the service,” emphasizes the president of the Consortium.
This new joint service on the Low Island It will allow municipalities to have more modern waste collection trucks adapted to the orography, population dispersion and access roads. The winning company will have to collect waste from urban areas, but will also go through remote mid-level towns with complicated access such as Masca, Teno Alto or Tierra del Trigo. In addition, recycling will be promoted with the implementation of the five containers throughout the region, which will also lower the bill paid to the PIRS for the delivery of unseparated waste.
For Medina, this service of garbage collection It has been his great priority since he assumed the presidency of the Consortium in the summer of 2020. After many coordination meetings and administrative procedures, in March 2021 some specifications that occupy more than 400 pages were approved. Then, Medina himself highlighted that “the Cabildo and the four city councils of the region have been able to work together without looking at our political acronyms, since we are talking about four different local governments in which four political forces participate.” In Garachico, the Canarian Coalition governs with an absolute majority and in El Tanque, the PSOE, also alone. In Los Silos there is a CC-PP government pact and in Buenavista, an alliance between Sí se puede (SSP) and the Canarian Coalition.
The Isla Baja Consortium also has a Regional Tourist Signage Plan under way, endowed with 480,000 euros, “to improve all the information received by visitors who come to this region regarding cultural, heritage, natural and leisure attractions”. In addition, the four towns work on a joint commercial promotion strategy together with the Commerce area of the Cabildo de Tenerife and the General Directorate of Commerce of the Canary Islands Government. “We have a grant of 150,000 euros to develop it and we are immersed in the drafting of that strategy, which we want to start applying in 2023,” announces José Gregorio Pérez Medina.
Another service that is expected to be pooled soon in the Isla Baja region is the sanitary control of the drinking water that reaches the population and the supply of chlorine for its treatment. In addition, the Consortium continues to work on “other proposals for joint services” that allow improving their execution and economic profitability.
The connection with the insular ring
The Isla Baja Consortium is also working to respond to the concern posed by the municipalities of the region due to their road connections with the island ring, especially in the cases of Buenavista, Los Silos and Garachico. José Gregorio Pérez Medina acknowledges that in the region they are “very concerned about the situation of the road network in the future, when the island ring is closed.” The problem is in the connection of the coast of Isla Baja with the insular ring to the south. “We are fighting a lot with the Roads areas of the Cabildo and the Government of the Canary Islands to find a way to improve the TF-421, from Las Cruces, and the Tierra del Trigo road, which has just been paved.” There is also a commitment from the Government of the Canary Islands to prepare a study of alternatives to improve the connection of Isla Baja and the ring.
