SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, 6 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Canary Islands Coalition (CC) has demanded that the Government of the Canary Islands apply to the payroll of its personnel in La Palma the deduction of 60% of personal income tax, as contemplated in the General State Budget Law (PGE) and that it be corrected immediately for the February payroll.
“If the majority of the companies on the Island were able to make the effort so that everything was ready in the January payroll, it is not understood why the Government has not been able to,” said Fernando Clavijo and Nieves Lady Barreto today at a press conference.
Both officials regretted that the regional Executive did not prepare to be able to apply the deduction to their staff on the January payroll. “This problem must be resolved for the February payroll because it is a legal obligation,” Barreto claimed.
In this sense, CC requested that the personal income tax deduction be applied to teaching and non-teaching staff of Education, Public Works, Agriculture and the Canary Islands Employment Service who work on the island of La Palma and to the Area Directorate of Health.
“The Government of the Canary Islands never believed in this measure. It was opposed to it from the first minute and if today it is a reality it has only been thanks to the efforts of the La Palma Canary Islands Coalition and the work of our two deputies in Congress, Ana Oramas and María Fernández”, highlighted Clavijo.
“What we have wanted from minute zero is that people, in this critical situation that the Island is going through, have more money in their pocket,” said the deputy from La Palma Nieves Lady Barreto. “And this is already a reality for pensioners, to whom the personal income tax deduction and the 8.5% increase have been applied, and for the vast majority of employed workers on La Palma,” she added.
According to the parliamentarian, “it is a fair measure that means that in a year between 56 and 60 million euros will remain on the island. That money remains in the pockets of palm trees to invest, to consume, to pay the rent or the mortgage and so that the self-employed can get more comfortable at the end of the month”.
Nieves Lady Barreto also drew attention to the fact that the Government of the Canary Islands has not only failed to comply with the legal obligation to apply the personal income tax deduction in the January payroll, but that it continues to fail to comply with a large part of its commitments with the Isla, such as the payment of the 30,000 euros that he promised in March 2022 to all the people who lost their homes with the volcano.
Among the “long list of breaches” of the Executive headed by Ángel Víctor Torres, Barreto recalled that there is still not a single compensation measure for people who lost other properties, such as second homes, vacation homes, shops, farms or workshops.
He added that the problem of those who could not insure their homes in the first days of the eruption or those who lost their homes during the insurance grace period has not been resolved, nor have aid been paid to repair farms and replace damaged greenhouses and Rental aid is not reaching everyone who needs it.
In the same way, he assured that nothing is known about the definitive houses that the Government announced that it was going to build, nor about the reopening of the LP-2, nor when the two decrees for the reconstruction of houses and for the recovery of agricultural activity, “which were going to be approved last year in June, then in December, then in January and we are already in February and they have not been approved,” recalled Nieves Lady Barreto.
At this point, Barreto warned about the uncertainty generated by the community farm project that the Government wants and that its own technicians calculate that it will take 10 to 15 years to build.
