The mobile fleet of the Santa Lucía de Tirajana City Council has 18 new vehicles since this Wednesday. Twelve will be used by Public Services personnel (Municipal Warehouse, Parks and Gardens, Maintenance), 5 for Social Services personnel, Technical Office and Internal Regime and one by the Equality area. This acquisition has been possible thanks to the support of the Gran Canaria council. The main novelty is that five of the new vehicles are acquired by the City Council through the renting system, an annual rental payment that includes maintenance, insurance and repair costs.
Five of the vehicles presented today, plus a truck that will arrive soon, will be paid for through the renting system. The annual budget for the five cars and the truck will cost the City Council 41.000 euros per year. These five rental vehicles, and another car that will be destined for the equality area, are hybrids. Of the 12 vehicles that Public Services personnel will use, 7 are five-seater vans, four are two-seater mixed vans and one is a 4x4 passenger car.
The mayor of Santa Lucía de Tirajana, Francisco García, highlighted that “the City Council of Santa Lucía de Tirajana currently has 96 vehicles in its fleet, we are incorporating 18 today and we are processing five more, so it is the largest increase that has occurred in recent years.” García announced that “we are going to carry out a diagnosis of all the cars and trucks in the fleet, because some are already 30 years old and will surely have to be deregistered.”
The Minister of Institutional Cooperation of the Gran Canaria council, Carmelo Ramírez, stressed that “the purchase of these vehicles is due to a proposal from the City Council and has the support of the budget of the Cooperation Plan that we have with the 21 municipalities, in this case we contribute in around 500.000 euros, which will be used to improve the vehicle park fleet that will be used by municipal staff and, therefore, public and administrative services will be improved.”
The first deputy mayor, Santiago Rodríguez, stated that "this acquisition was very necessary because in our fleet we have some vehicles that are already obsolete, which need to be changed for the safety of our staff and to provide better service." Rodríguez added that "with today's acquisitions plus those we have purchased in recent years for civil protection and for the local police, we will improve the job security of the workers, who are the ones who will use these vehicles."
The second deputy mayor, Marcos Rufo, thanked “the Cabildo of Gran Canaria for the sensitivity and collaboration that it has always shown with the municipality of Santa Lucía de Tirajana, we believe that the increase in the fleet of public services with several vans that will be destined to the repair of roads and works, parks and gardens and the maintenance of municipal infrastructure, it will improve the conditions in which the staff works.
