A municipal official indicated that the contractor had failed to comply with the hiring process and that they hope to solve this problem.
MANTA, Manabi
With posters in hand, a group of people held a sit-in on the morning of this Monday, the 6th, outside the Municipality of Manta to claim for the payment of outstanding salaries.
The protesters demanded the cancellation of values related to a contract for the collection of dangerous infectious and sharps hospital waste from the health houses of that Manabi canton.
“Mr. Mayor, pay us, we are workers,” read one of the posters carried by some of the people who were located in the park that is in front of the municipal building.
Former soccer player Roberto Majao Moreira, representing the protesters, indicated that the process to carry out the collection work lasted nine months, from September 2020 to July 2021, but that it has not yet been possible to collect what is related to the contract.
Majao indicated that behind him there are nine people who collaborated in the most tragic time of the COVID-19 pandemic, in a service that, according to him, no other person or entity wanted to do at that time.
He assured that the departure of this service has been recorded since the beginning of this 2021, and that presumably until now he has not obtained a favorable response on the payment of pending assets.
In Manta, about 70% of users of the potable water service have debts of more than a month; entity started cuts this week
Yandri Briones, another of the workers, indicated that some collaborated from the early hours of the morning in the most tragic months of the health crisis. “When the waste collection systems of the health facilities were collapsed they called us, we attended, we did not care if it was night or early in the morning, it does not seem fair that they do not pay,” he declared.
Ángelo Alvarado, another employee of the service provider, indicated that the debts have worried him and that he could even leave the place where he currently lives with his family, since he has been pending to pay the rent of that property for several months.
Héctor Bowen, director of the Department of Hygiene of the Municipality of Manta, said that whoever claims values for this contract dropped the process twice in the Public Procurement system.
After that, according to the official, an agreement was signed, but that takes time and in that process they are already in order to comply with the payment.
In addition, Bowen maintained that it is not due to lack of resources that it has not been canceled, but that all the processes established in the contracting regulations must be complied with.
Ledín Valencia, Manta councilor, said he did not know about the claims made by the people who would be owed for their services and pointed out that they as councilors have not yet paid what corresponds to the salary of last November, but that they have already received the previous week the thirteenth salary. (I)
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