The mayor of Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Canary Islands Coalition (CC) candidate for re-election in the upcoming elections on May 28, José Manuel Bermúdez, lamented yesterday the “mistreatment” to which the PSOE has subjected the elderly in the Canary Islands; He described as “disastrous” the social and health policies implemented by the Cabildo and the regional government, and announced a new strategy to combat loneliness in homes in the capital of Tenerife.
The construction of five Day Centers and the implementation of a cohousing system will be the main measures of this municipal government program for the elderly in the municipality, as explained by the nationalist candidate, who was accompanied by the Councilor for Social Action, Rosario González, and other members of the electoral list to the City Council of this capital.
The mayor criticized the “inexplicable insensitivity” of the socialists at the head of the Cabildo, “by closing the Ansina program and leaving thousands of our elders without activities, alone and abandoned in the middle of the pandemic”, and valued the immediate response created from the City Council through the Santa Cruz Vital program. “Our City Council had to do the work that the Cabildo and Government did not do in the last four years, we reinforced the home assistance service and created a project like Santa Cruz Vital to compensate for the terrible loss of Ansina,” said the mayor.
Bermúdez announced his intention to “declare war on loneliness, the main cause of unhappiness for those who have given the best of their years to build the society we enjoy today.” The first measure of the new strategy will be the creation of a new Day Center in each district of the municipality, to promote collective, leisure, cultural, sports and training activities. The second will be the promotion of a cohousing program, “an alternative residential model that would allow us to act as a link between older people who live alone and who would be willing to share a home,” he explained.
