The Municipal Company of Housing and Services (Muvisa) of the City Council of La Laguna considers it unfeasible to be able to assume the home help service of the municipality. From the Social Welfare area, Muvisa had been commissioned to study the technical feasibility of assuming direct management of said service, as a possible option after the current company awarded the contract sent a letter explaining that, “due to current conditions , they do not consider it viable to continue with the provision and have asked us to proceed to withdraw that service, ”explained the councilor for the area, Rubens Ascanio, last April.
However, from Muvisa “they have made a detailed study of the hiring and the possibilities they had and consider that it is unfeasible right now for the company, and with the current regulations, to assume a greater workload than they are already doing,” he said. yesterday the mayor, who recalled that “we are talking about almost 200 workers in a service that reaches 1,200 users throughout La Laguna, and has quite complicated logistics.”
For this reason, Ascanio indicated that, “in the end, the option that is being worked on, which is not the one we like the most, is to maintain the bidding format and we will try to make it reflect the improvements that have been demanded of us so much by the of the service workers as well as of the user families themselves”.
Regarding the deadlines, he added that “at the moment we are within the legal extensions of the contract and we have room to work, but our intention is to do it as soon as possible, taking into account the administrative rhythms.”
The service was awarded in 2018 for 15 million euros and a term of four years with the possibility of extending another two, until 2024. “It is a service that has had an upturn in spending because it goes home and has had to take a series of anti-COVID prevention measures that were not initially provided for in the contract. And there is also a fairly significant increase in wage costs with the improvement of the minimum wage. The company asked us at the end of January not to continue with this service and that as quickly as possible proceed to tender it again or to another management model, such as direct”, explained the councilor last April, while emphasizing that “the company is currently providing the service” and that this “will be maintained until we have an alternative”.
