SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, 16 May. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The Vice President and Minister of Finance of the Government of the Canary Islands, Román Rodríguez, has guaranteed this Monday that the island of La Palma will receive the “maximum” of economic resources from the Solidarity Fund of the European Union to undertake the reconstruction of the island but has admitted which is “very small” and may not exceed 24.5 million.
In response to a question from the Nationalist Group in a parliamentary committee, he pointed out that the report on public and private damage, which accounts for 982 million, was delivered to the European Commission at the beginning of April by the Ministry of Finance.
He has indicated that these economic funds can only be allocated to the public sector and infrastructures, for which he has recognized that “the response to the reconstruction” of the island “is not in this fund” but in the ordinary and extraordinary budgets that can be designed by all the institutions.
The Canarian vice president understands the “concern and despair” on the island but has specified that the mixed commission, where all the public administrations sit, is the appropriate body to discuss the reconstruction, as well as the specific commission of Parliament.
In this sense, he commented that the Canarian Government has included in the programming of the ordinary funds 2021-27 of the EU the project of the Fuente Santa spa, in Fuencaliente, which will allow the Cabildo to release ten million euros from the Fdcan that They will be used for other needs.
CC-PNC CLAIMS A “CREDIBLE” PAYMENT PLAN
Lady Barreto (CC-PNC) has urged the vice president to “clear up doubts” about the losses of the private part in the eruption since many banana growers have confessed to her, for example, that they do not know if he will have left the island in the fall to go to live in Tenerife.
For this reason, it has asked the public administrations to design a payment plan “for several years and that is credible” and include funds to rebuild homes, pay for farms, dig them up from the lava, tourist homes or second homes, “from the urgent to the less urgent.
He has indicated that the decree approved by the Government in December “is just a path”, underlining that “if there is no money” it will not be possible to do “anything” because the 60,000 euros that the State gives for lost housing are not enough and It is not known “when they are going to collect” the 30,000 euros committed by the Government of the Canary Islands.
Barreto has insisted that “we must give hope” to the people, because “they no longer have any tears to shed” and on the island “there is a lot of anger against everyone”. “It’s less than 1,000 million, it’s not much for the Canary Islands Government or for the State,” he added.
