The mayor of El Rosario, Escolástico Gil, has shown this Friday his “discomfort” at the situation of the continuous water cuts to the residents of the upper part of the municipality due to the “deficient” hydraulic network of the Tenerife II prison, an infrastructure of the State located in the municipality and that shares a hydraulic network with the homes, despite repeated municipal requests to make its supply independent.
Gil also criticizes the recent public demonstrations by the Minister for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera, who attributed the deficiencies in the prison to the fact that the City Council did not make the necessary investments, even leading to collaboration with the Cabildo de Tenerife.
“I want to keep due institutional courtesy and not qualify statements that lack sensitivity, firstly towards the residents of this municipality who suffer from water cuts derived from mismanagement that is the responsibility of the minister herself and not, as she says, to this corporation, as well as to the prison officials, the prisoners and their families”, he stated in a note.
Gil recalls that the prison was “implanted without any consensus” in the municipality 34 years ago in one of the best potential areas for cultivation in El Rosario “and they forgot about it all this time and that is how they pay the neighbors of El Rosario, ignoring everything and lacking any sensitivity”.
In this sense, he wonders if “are they not seeing that my neighbors are going to fetch water with jugs and take a shower at a municipal sports center?”
The mayor clarifies to the public opinion that there is a “viable and relatively fast” solution to improve the water supply in ‘Tenerife II’ but “they do not want to accept the abandonment of so many years”.
According to Gil, “the Government Delegate is in hiding and the ministers who visit Tenerife suffer from an interested amnesia about the files that they approve in the Council of Ministers, which is where this problem should be, as they know very well.”
Specifically, Escolástico Gil points out to Minister Ribera that the planning instrument that must undertake the work to expand the reservoir and channeling is the Plan for Amortization and Creation of Penitentiary Centers (PACEP), whose review was extended until 2028 on 15 November 2022 in the Council of Ministers.
Thus, it indicates that the works are executed, by order of the Council of Ministers, the Society of Penitentiary Infrastructures and Equipment and State Security (SIEPSE), which is currently in the drafting phase of its strategic plan.
“You only have to include the drafting of projects and execution of the necessary works in said planning,” he details.
Ask Pestana to stop being hidden
Escolástico Gil also points out that the Government delegate, Anselmo Pestana, “instead of being hidden for this issue and coming for a walk to the municipality in the ministerial delegations”, should request that the Council of Ministers approve this revision of the PACEP to adapt the infrastructures ‘Tenerife II’ prisons to the current hydraulic sustainability needs and to repair and expand the hydraulic supply sources of the facilities, tanks and pipes.
In fact, he points out that last July it was learned through the management of ‘Tenerife II’ that SIEPSE plans to invest 15 million euros in the prison within these infrastructure plans.
“You just have to include these hydraulic works in that package, and the central government must expand the item if necessary,” he says.
The mayor of El Rosario thus settles “any doubt about who has the powers and responsibility for investment”, and offers all the collaboration of the City Council that “has sustained for many years, at its own expense and to the detriment of the municipal coffers and of the supply service for the neighbors, a situation that now becomes unsustainable any longer”.
