Email
August 2
What seems to be a regular occurrence every year and this year is no exception, is that this great town of Orihuela Costa is without its familiar sights and its chiringuitos and the services they offer.
Due to a fiasco with the contracts yet again they are a visibly missed attraction.
Once the elections were over and a new government had been formed, then there were the negotiations for which councillor has which position, then they needed a few weeks to find their feet, this took us into July, which is the beginning of the summer season for the tourists, and also the beginning of the holiday season for the civil servants in the town hall, so it will be much slower to get anything done.
We could say with some certainty that nothing could be resolved in July and August.
Then there was the process of tendering the contracts for the bars, which would have taken several weeks, so we can say goodbye to the summer season.
Like any business, you look after your most valuable asset and invest in it; if it was up to PIOC (the party for the independence of Orihuela Costa) we would get the bars open, up and running and all the services in order for the 900,000 tourists who come to the town of Orihuela Costa for their vacations, then figure out the contracts, but now it is understood that the bars will not be up and running till 2024.
We also think about the repercussions of the closure of the bars, all the staff having to be laid off, lost revenue to the businesses who supply the bars, the entertainers’ lost income, and last of all the lost revenue to the council. The image and reputation of Orihuela Costa is one of the foremost thoughts of PIOC.
We then have several of our supposedly Blue Flag beaches closed because of sewage contamination, which PIOC had highlighted several times but was ignored by Orihuela, and possibly more to follow due to the slow reaction by the town hall.
We now come on to the rubbish, which Orihuela Costa is being overwhelmed with and the town hall can’t get to grips with.
The coast is slowly sinking under the amount of all the different types of rubbish being dumped, as well as the acute shortage of bins and the number of bins that need replacing.
Other areas of Spain have greatly reduced the amount of fly tipping through investment, by increasing fines, designated mobile police looking for and catching fly tippers in action. So it can be done, there just needs to be an incentive from Orihuela to do so.
Peter Houghton
Partido para la Independencia de Orihuela Costa (PIOC)
