The Güímar urban solid waste collection and street cleaning service already has the specifications that will govern the public tender. The document almost doubles the human and material resources compared to the current one and its cost increases by 250%, going from almost one million euros to 2.5 million, with an eight-year contract extendable for only nine months. The information commission has already given the go-ahead and on the 10th the plenary will pronounce in an extraordinary session.
In this way, six years of waiting to improve the garbage collection and street cleaning service come to an end. These are the years that have elapsed since the administrative concession for which the FCC company provides the service expired since it was awarded, in 2006, for a period of ten years that expired in 2016.
Among the conditions that the Güímar City Council establishes for companies interested in competing is that the workforce must have 35 workers. Currently, FCC has to have 20, but 16 remain active, according to the Popular Party. This increase of almost 100% in personnel is parallel to the increase in the fleet that, among other resources, will have six trucks and a seventh that the municipal administration acquired. Added to them are seven vans and four sweepers of different sizes, adapted to the town planning to optimize the provision of the service.
The informative commission was chaired by Airam Puerta, in his capacity as councilor responsible for Concessionary Companies. In his last days as mayor (May 2021), he explained that “we are committed to an innovative, integrated service, with the presence of the fifth fraction and with a tremendous performance model through the use of a lot of technology…” . Most of these aspects are ignored in the new specifications.
It should be remembered that the mayor, Gustavo Pérez, spoke repeatedly during his term of office concerned about the state of the cleaning and waste collection service in Güímar. In this regard, he went so far as to affirm that “the cleaning contest is the biggest failure of this government group and the previous one.” The councilor was aware that he needs to improve and announced, several months ago, that he expected progress in this regard in the final stretch of the legislature that will end in May.
