No 524
Monday, 16th June, 2014
Tel: 96 673 0057
CHIRINGUITOS DEL SOL ARE GO! At the end of last week and into the weekend, an army of workers took to the beaches of Orihuela Costa, to start building the beach bars and relaxation areas that will be available to us all throughout the summer. After controversy, complaint, threats and discussions, the contract for providing beach based services on the Orihuela Costa was finally signed this week, with the company Chiringuitos del Sol being awarded the work. In the early hours of Friday morning, immediately after the contract was signed, the workers started building the infrastructure. Their first priority was for safety, installing buoys along one the beach of Cabo Roig, where a tragedy occurred some years ago when a boat struck a young bather, with the new system already in place to keep boats away from the coastline, thus keeping the beach area safer.
There had been a delay in awarding the contract, as well as criticism over the inclusion of quality requirements, to ensure that the company providing the service was of the highest possible standard. A number of companies had been excluded from the tender process as they didn´t meet the requirements set out in the tender. More recently, it was discovered that the company which did meet all of the requirements had an outstanding amount due to the town hall of around 880,000 euro, which the town hall had failed to invoice to cover previous contracts many years ago. It had been wrongly reported by some Spanish and English papers, fuelled by the political opposition, that this was a debt, and therefore excluded the company from bidding, but this was never the case on account of the money never having been invoiced, a matter which caused the current government to delay the process further whilst the matter was clarified and finallycorrected. Continued on Page 2