Marián Franquet responds to the manager of the Hogar Santa Rita, Tomás Villar, in EL DÍA and demands more transparency, an accounting that separates public and private spending, and that allows the Cabildo to enter the board of trustees that manages the largest residence for the elderly in Spain.
What do you think of the latest statements to EL DÍA by the manager of Hogar Santa RitaThomas Villar?
It seems to me that he is doing an exercise in confusion. Trying to explain what is inexplicable, which is the current situation of Hogar Santa Rita and that its workers are unpaid. In addition, it uses information or data that, if not explained well, can confuse. And it seems to me, above all, that it is an interview with a very personal interest: to save himself from the criticism he receives from relatives of users, unions and institutions.
Villar says that the Cabildo is suffocating Hogar Santa Rita financially, is that so?
Last week, the Cabildo entered the Hogar Santa Rita half a million euros. And the workers are still unpaid. That corresponds to December 2022. The monthly installments for January and February will be paid on these days. To that entity and to the rest. And the only workers who are unpaid are yours. We still don’t know how Hogar Santa Rita handles money. Not only the IASS money, but all the income it has, such as private income, from municipalities, donations and others. All of that is a mystery. Now we are depositing 500,000 euros without withholding anything, but it seems that in the next one we are going to have to withhold them because there is an embargo from the Treasury, which of course we do not know what it corresponds to. It is common for embargoes from Santa Rita to reach us, although we do not know their origin. With half a million entered a week ago, income from municipalities and private income, why don’t the workers get paid?
Why are there uncovered public spaces in Santa Rita?
Villar spoke of 27 unfilled places, but I checked it the other day and there were 19 or 20. Those figures keep changing because people die, some enter and others leave. We have an agreement with Santa Rita that there cannot be more than three weekly admissions. And there are no more than three because Santa Rita tells us that she has no capacity for more. In addition, they are never immediate income. It is a process that begins when we call a person, we inform them of the place and many families want to visit the center beforehand and they have to organize themselves… these are people who are going to live in another place, it is a moving, so they don’t leave overnight. They normally take a couple of weeks to occupy the space. It is normal that in a number of spaces as large as the one we have in Santa Rita there are 19 or 20 pending. That is normal and more with the limit of three weekly income that Santa Rita requested. And then there is another added factor, which only happens in Santa Rita. In the last 9 months, 37 families have told us that they do not want a place there. That means we have to keep pulling the list and restart the whole process.
“Veto the entry of the Cabildo to the patronage of Santa Rita is an exercise in obscurantism”
Why did they reject the proposal to enter the board of trustees with a voice, but without a vote, and only for matters of mutual agreement?
Rejection is the other way around. We have asked to be members of the board of trustees because the Cabildo has been collaborating with Hogar Santa Rita for decades. We are going back to a collaboration of years, with agreements in pesetas to install elevators, fix kitchens and many more things. All this is a huge investment by the Cabildo, an investment by the people of Tenerife to pay, for example, debts with Social Security and various incidents. Every time there has been a problem, the Cabildo, that is, the citizens of Tenerife, have invested to save Hogar Santa Rita. That is why we understand that we have to be on the board of trustees that manages the home, to collaborate with the support of specialized IASS personnel.
Did you meet with the board of trustees?
Yes. We requested to meet with them to be able to explain to them what the intentions of IASS and the Cabildo were when entering the board of trustees. It is not an intervention or anything like that, just collaborating. They took us to a meeting with some kind of permanent they have. There are nine people, of which a couple of them are workers at the center and others are people trusted by Villar. There we exposed all this so that they could transfer it to the general assembly that was held days later, where the people who have to decide if the Cabildo enters or not enters. We asked them to be able to go to that meeting to be able to explain ourselves and resolve doubts, but they refused. The following was the refusal to form part of the board of trustees. It seems to me a lack of respect, but not to me, but to the Cabildo and the citizens of the island. Denying us entry to the board of trustees is a clear exercise in obscurantism. We simply want to collaborate in the management and have direct access to all the information. Know what the real income is. We do not know how much the city councils pay, how much users pay for the private parking spaces or for the little chalets they have. We don’t have that information and the numbers don’t add up to me.
Is the new agreement a solution only for Santa Rita?
No. The standard framework agreement, which we have with all the residences, has already been signed. After the health intervention, and due to all the deficiencies that emerged, we wanted to incorporate more issues. Because it is important to highlight that there is another very serious matter on which we do not have information either, although we have asked for it: how is the judicial process for which the manager of Santa Rita is accused of an alleged crime of, nothing more and nothing less What reckless homicide? With all the presumption of innocence, it is a very serious criminal offense and we want to know how that is. We accompanied the SCS in the intervention and collaborated in everything we could, so we saw the serious deficiencies that existed. And that is why we wanted to introduce some issues to bring order. And there are three, simple. The first, to have the social security number of the workers paid by the IASS. And that makes sense, since we have a legal and subsidiary responsibility, therefore we have to know who they are. And we have been denied that information. The second, an analytical accounting, which implies separating the expenses that we are paying from the public administration and those that are private. And that is done by any entity, but Villar says that he cannot remove that. That is more than made up and you should know it. Well, he refuses to do it. And the third, inspections of the quality of services. And, by the way, the person in charge of quality of the services of Santa Rita is the son of Villar, who surely did not enter due to public opposition. Fortunately, in the framework agreement, we continue to have a certain inspection capacity and we are going to value it.
Will there be more inspections?
He has refused to let us inspect it, to say what expenses go one way or the other, and to give us the social security number of the workers. It is a question of will and transparency. It does not imply any breach or anything in relation to the agreement. It’s just transparency. And he has told us no to everything. Also, I suppose that when the workers are unpaid, the management staff will not have been paid either. I understand that Villar and the people who work around him will not have received salaries that, by the way, we do not know.
Do you think that in Santa Rita there is animosity towards you?
“A week ago we paid them half a million euros and they have not paid the staff”
What happens is that what they probably don’t like is that there are political groups or people who belong to political groups that try to direct things and do not let public money be wasted. We were very concerned after the health intervention and we have been working hard. Now there are nutritionists hired, training has been given, we have introduced protocols and we have done it to guarantee the well-being of users, which is what interests us. When the intervention was started, the Covid protocols were science fiction, they did not exist, and thanks to the rapid intervention of Health, today we are not speaking in other terms. What he doesn’t like is that we simply tell him things clearly. I have personally asked Mr. Villar, especially after his accusation and after finding out about the management that existed, to step aside and hand over the position to a person with professional skills commensurate with a center that is very complex. to manage. But he has refused and has wanted to continue directing it. But the most serious thing is the refusal to let us enter the board, the Cabildo, which is on the board of Radio ECCA and many other foundations, which see it as an advantage and help. Here the only logical response to deny us entry to the board of Santa Rita is that we do not have access to information about what is happening there.
