Eight months after the Aranda library stopped buying books, faced with the legal obligation to produce a statement, there are no signs of a solution in the short or medium term. According to the Councilor for Recruitment, Francisco Martín Hontoria, although it is an important issue, there are “more urgent” specifications, which must necessarily “be taken out”, such as, for example, the Blue Zone specifications, whose contract expires now; the insurance specifications, the asphalt or the fire extinguishers, among “many others”.
To this we must add some remnants that cannot wait since, to get ahead, they have to be awarded before December 31 of this year. The department must also face the specifications of the budget investments, services and now, the new proposal for remnants. “A bottleneck has been created,” admits the mayor.
In his opinion, the increase in workload is motivated by several factors starting with the demanding new Law on Public Sector Contracts. “Now there is a lot more workload,” he says, citing electricity as an example. “Before, when light bulbs were needed, the service itself bought them but now there has to be a specification and so on,” he explains, knowing that the current system, although slower, is more guaranteeing.
The problem is the lack of staff, both in a Recruitment department that has “a lot of work” and that takes out everything that comes in, and in the different councils where in an ideal world “it would be necessary” a hiring technician in each area. “That is impossible,” he laments.
With the current panorama, the councils prepare the drafts but then it is Contracting the one that reviews and verifies that they comply with all the legal precepts. The councilor defends, in this regard, the management of a contracting department with few staff, which “does not stop working.” “Just yesterday, eight months of hiring were opened,” he underlines with his eyes set on the future List of Jobs. “As soon as it is approved, the department will be strengthened,” he warns. But the solution also happens, adds the councilor, Elia Salinero, because the sections present “well” the specifications that are later reviewed by Contracting.
Although the technicians point out that the priority of the files is set from the political sphere, Hontoria insists that there are things that are too urgent that “must be addressed” before the library’s specifications, especially if we take into account the added complexity of a file that hopes to open to several bookstores so as not to centralize book purchases in a single establishment.
IU
For Izquierda Unida, the situation of the municipal library responds to the “disastrous management” of a government team that acts with “carelessness and inaction.” “Far from seeking and finding solutions to the situations that arise, nonsense is increasing in a municipal administration in which laziness and lack of ideas and motivation predominate,” reproaches the councilor, Vanesa González.
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