The Santa Cruz de Tenerife Local Police station It has been an ”uninhabitable” and ”painful” place for years. The building, located at number 79 Avenida Tres de Mayo, in the heart of the island’s capital, does not meet the necessary conditions for the 337 agents who pass through there to work. This is what the workers have denounced in recent days. Among the junk that piles up at the headquarters is a broken down car wash train, a broken counter and, in recent days, rats have been roaming around the building.
This building was already in the spotlight in 2018, when agents reported a higher prevalence of cancer cases among the staff who worked there. The City Council has been promising solutions for years. In 2021, the municipal corporation announced that the Local Police headquarters would move to the Urban Planning building. The Department of Security assured that same year that the change would take place before May 2023. Five months after the promised date, the workers no longer “believe anything.”
Sources of Santa Cruz de Tenerife City Council They claim that this Tuesday Public Health has sent technicians to clean the building. ”The entire property will be inspected to prepare a report on the reasons why the presence of rodents has occurred,” they add.
As for the new headquarters of the Local Police, “work continues on its transfer,” they point out. ”At this time, this move involves carrying out works in municipal offices, both to accommodate police station personnel and those who have to move to a new headquarters. Work is underway on the definition and drafting of these construction projects. In addition to the Urban Planning Management, this operation also includes the General Antequera facilities, which would house the personnel who leave their premises so that the Local Police Station can occupy them,” they indicate.
”What happens in that building is unusual. It houses a third of the entire municipal staff and is always functioning, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, but it is not in good condition,” warns Jesús Illada, delegate of the CSIF (Independent Trade Union Center and Civil Servants) at the City Hall of Santa Cruz of Tenerife.
Illada asserts that the staff feels “discriminated against” in relation to the rest of the municipality’s staff. Furthermore, the union regrets that these are the working conditions of the Police in a provincial capital. ”We are the ugly duckling of the City Council. You go to any other municipal office and it is impeccable, it cannot be that 337 workers are in these conditions. “They have been promising for years that we are going to leave that sad building,” explains the agent. The municipal corporation insists that this building, like the rest of the municipal properties, is reviewed periodically and any reported incidents are addressed immediately.
There are many daily activities that agents carry out in these offices. “We changed our uniforms there. “We use the showers, the locker room, the toilets… When we go to look for the material, we do it on a counter that is burst,” he says. “The water from the leaks remains puddled and we put the cones ourselves so that people do not slip,” details the CSIF delegate.
On hot days, using the air conditioning is a challenge. The motors are installed in an interior patio where there are no drafts as there are no windows, so the hot air generated by the motors remains in the environment.
A broken washing train
Among the junk that accumulates at the Local Police headquarters is a broken down washing train. “When the settlement was paid, it had already broken again,” says Illada. The train has been broken for “years.” The solution to cleaning the patrol cars has been to hire a private company that sends a person “with a bucket, a sponge and some gloves” to wash the vehicles.
On the contrary, it is the agents themselves who have to clean their motorcycles. “There is no one who does it, only the police when they can,” says the delegate. The union insists that there are three vacant maintenance officer positions. Before they were covered and these agents were in charge of basic maintenance of cars and motorcycles. “The last one retired a few days ago, we no longer have any maintenance officers,” he says.
On its social networks, the CSIF has also published a video in which a rat can be seen wandering around the police station. ”The images are not even in the basement or the garage, it is on the main floor, where the offices, the store and the lost and found are located,” the delegate clarifies.
Higher prevalence of cancer
In 2019, the Federation of Citizen Services of Canarian Workers’ Commissions (FSC-CCOO), as well as the UGT and SEPCA unions, requested a report from the Labor Inspection explaining the highest incidence of cancer cases among agents who worked at the Local Police headquarters on Tres de Mayo Avenue. The unions requested that an analysis be carried out on the building’s materials to see if it was possible to establish a relationship between them and the number of diseases diagnosed among the staff.
Since July 2018, the workers had an epidemiological study prepared by the University of La Laguna that concluded that the prevalence of cancer among the workforce was 4.4% compared to 2.1% in the municipality and 1.8%. % of the general population. This document considered it necessary to analyze any type of contaminant existing in the property.
He Santa Cruz de Tenerife City Council denied that there was a higher incidence of this disease among the building workers and called the unions “irresponsible.” ”We have asked all institutions for reports on this possible risk and no document shows what these unions say. What’s more, there is less incidence of cases in this building than in other municipal offices. And the prevalence of cancer in the general population is increasing, but nothing that is notable in this building,” said Juan José Martínez, then Councilor for Finance and Human Resources.
