THE WEATHER
Edition 348
www.thecourier.es
Friday 17th November 2017
BACK TO THE OMBUDSMAN T
he Federation of Associations of Orihuela Costa (FAOC) has been in touch with the Valencian Ombudsman again, this time to complain about the waste cleaning and removal services provided by Orihuela council. Earlier this year José Cholbi received a complaint from FAOC about the state of local play areas, and ruled that Orihuela council should do something about it. Though his views had no legal standing, the authority responded last week with a package of measures over the matter, as reported in The Courier. This time Cholbi, along with the Valencian government's environmental health department, have been furbished with files outlining
T
FAOC's concerns that municipal ordinances regarding urban cleaning, sanitation and management for the Orihuela Costa by Orihuela council have been broken for over two years. The report is filled with photographs of uncleared rubbish and communications with the Orihuela authority over the matter. The complaint to the Valencia environmental health department warns about the risk to health for Orihuela Costa residents, with the chance of infectious diseases being spread due to the large number of large number of flies, mosquitoes, cockroaches, rats, dogs and feral cats that feast on the uncollected garbage FAOC talk about old rub-
the recession in 2012. The figures have now reached the region of where they were in 2008, but still below the “boom” time returns where 40 thousand properties were sold per year. Second-hand apartments are accounting for 83 percent of the Alicante Province sales, with the rest being ”new builds”. The INE says that so far this year, the Murcia region has seen a rise over nine months of eleven percent, at just over 10 thousand sales, with the September specific figures showing a dramatic 27 percent leap compared to where they were a year ago. Nationally, the figures are
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bish collection vehicles that are not fit for purpose, along with bad management and irregular collections, together with a shortage of workers and not enough containers to put trash in. The association wants the Ombudsman to call on
Orihuela council to "budget appropriately" for waste collections and services for the Orihuela Costa in the authority's 2018 budget, which FAOC claim will not cover the needs of the area, based on the latest municipal budget.
PROPERTIES IN DEMAND
he real estate market in Alicante Province and the Murcia region has produced the best figures in almost a decade, according to the National Institute of Statistics (INE). The figures for Alicante Province show that between January and September this year, over 26 thousand properties were sold, which is nearly 15 percent more than in the same period of 2016, with the September rise being over six percent compared to a year earlier. It’s the fifth straight year that real estate sales figures have climbed in Alicante Province since reaching a low during the back end of
See page 2 for the week´s forecast
up almost 14 percent, with a combination of foreign buyers and increased domestic demand said to be fuelling the rises. Companies like
the BBVA bank and constructors Taylor Wimpey say that they expect the upturn to continue after a successful year.
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