Torrevieja Withdraws Beach Maintenance Contract After Bidder Warns of Anomalies

Torrevieja town hall has been forced to withdraw the beach maintenance tender, and will reissue it with amendments, after one of the companies participating warned the council that some services could overlap with those already provided by Acciona, the winner of the extremely expensive waste disposal contract since 2022.

As a result, the Councillor for Beaches, Antonio Vidal, in response to the recommendations of the municipal technicians, neither of whom were apparently aware of the contents of the contracts, decided to withdraw all masonry and plumbing work in order to clear the tender.

During the last plenary session, the government team reported on the archiving decrees of up to six contracting files, including beaches. Something that gained criticism from the spokesperson for Sueña Torrevieja, Pablo Samper.

The delay, however, does not endanger the bathing season, since cleaning the sandy beaches is also Acciona’s responsibility. Other issues that are being paid without a contract remain in question, such as the maintenance of huts and public toilets on the beaches.

One of the main objectives of the cancelled tender – it was published in the middle of the pre-election period, in March 2023 – was to extend the public toilet service beyond the high season and Easter. For councillor Antonio Vidal, this should be the top priority, since it is, the beaches councillor emphasised, “a service highly demanded by residents throughout the year.”

The opening of the toilets would also be complemented in the future with the new modules with self-cleaning services that the council wants to locate in a number of places, with municipal investment is 318,000 euro. The contract, in fact, was awarded at the end of August last year, but installation has not yet begun.

The new beach contract document, for its part, is pending some legal reports and approval. The new document will also include, says the councillor, “a beach support group of about six or seven people, whose function will be to offer information to bathers about the current ordinances, as well as provide some services that until now did not have a permanent manager”, such as the distribution of firewood on the beaches during the night of San Juan.

The value of the contract that was put out to tender in March of last year amounted to 531,132.61 euro per year and had a duration of four years, which represented a total investment of 2,124,530.44 euro. A contract that has the possibility of being extended for one more year. It also contemplated an extra year of possible extension.

The maintenance contract included, as stated by the council in a press release, the maintenance and cleaning of urban furniture (benches, litter bins, signs, railings, posts, masts, walkways, bike racks, etc.) and elements that require painting or varnishing tasks such as fences (some of which have been carried out already recently by municipal technicians), walls, metal and wooden elements in general, civil works elements for access or delimitation of the beaches such as walls, ramps, etc., and lifeguard surveillance posts and toilets.

It also had an on-call service for emergencies and restoration of operation in the event of serious damage or dangerous situations, as well as transportation of heavy or large materials at the request of municipal technicians.

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