The Central Independent Trade Union and Officials (CSIF), has denounced this Monday that the Mayor of Estepona, José María García Urbanoowes “almost 6,000 euros” in complements to the Local Police officers that make up the VioGén unit in the city –which is intended for the surveillance and prevention of gender-based violence, which puts the existence of the service at risk, while the government team denies that it is giving up its continuity and assures that it does not have debts with the staff.
This has been highlighted from the union after the controversial statements that the alderman carried out last Friday at a Popular Party (PP) rally, where he tried to joke with an ostentatious bandage that he wore on his hand and for which he later apologized, verbalizing that “I have not even put my hand where I should not, it has been a simple domestic accident, It also has nothing to do with gender violence.”.
From CSIF they have denounced that the Estepona City Council “is considering the possibility that the Local Police officers who make up the VioGén unit resign to continue in the same, given the abandonment of which they are being victims by the mayor, who does not agree to pay them the almost 6,000 euros of arrears that is owed to them.”
According to CSIF, this unit currently has two officials from the Local Police Corps and attends to more than fifty active cases of women covered by this surveillance and prevention program of gender violence, as well as “there are more than 300 that can be attended at any time for being registered in said system with lower levels of protection”.
From the union they have recalled that the councilor of Estepona when he created this unit “acquired the commitment to supplement the salaries of the assigned agents, by passing these to a regime of permanent availability 24 hours a day, 365 days a year”.
“Unfortunately, and just like what happened with the police officers whom the mayor also punished for refusing to work overtime, the mayor of the Popular Party only kept his word for a few months, failing to pay these amounts until today”have criticized.
From CSIF they have urged the alderman to “repay amounts owed before said unit has to be dismantled due to the resignation of the agents, which would leave the hundreds of women who at the different levels of protection are sheltered by the VioGén program helpless.”
For its part, the government team has stated that “it is unfortunate that the CSIF union is dedicated to continually lying, in an effort to do politics and harm with falsehoods”, ensuring that “In no case does the Viogen service endangersince there is a collaboration agreement with the Ministry of the Interior for adherence to this system, which is used by public institutions such as the National Police and the Civil Guard, Penitentiary Institutions, Local and Autonomous Police, the General Council of the Judicial Power and the prosecution”.
“The Estepona City Council, with its mayor at its head, has shown its commitment and support to victims of gender violence and proof of them is that the aadherence to this Viogen system It has been produced with the PP government team”, the local executive has remarked.
Likewise, he stressed that “this government team not only has it not generated debt with the municipal staff, and so can be certified by the Municipal Intervention, but has paid the debt of the previous PSOE government for an amount of more than 4 million euros, due to arrears and failure to pay the municipal staff, including local police officers who could not even patrol because they did not have gasoline for the patrol cars”.