Whilst los autonomos (self-employed workers) struggle to pay their social security and workers are laid off, our dear politicians don’t appear to have twigged that there’s an economic crisis with its teeth sunk into the average person’s jugular vein.
You see, whilst they make the right noises, when it comes to jobs for the boys, it’s business as usual.
Let me give you an example: The Diputacion Provincial de Granada had 27 Diputados, each one with his generous salary and expense accounts, but the truly amazing thing was that there were 73 cargos de confianza, i.e., advisory jobs filled by friends, each one with a handsome salary.
When the Diputacion changed hands after the last elections, the new tenants reduced the cargos de confianza to 37, but there are still more advisers etc, than politicians!
The City Hall of Granada is no better; even with staff cuts because the figures were just too embarrassing, there are still more advisers than council members. (29 versus 16).
Closer to home, Motril with 60,000 inhabitants has three more advisers than councillors in the local government, (16 versus 13).
No, the fact of the matter is, many of the tasks that these juicy posts carry out could be done by municipal functionaries, i.e., permanent civil servants, but many politicians pay back favours with comfy posts, with unlikely titles. Who pays the wages? Rhetorical question, of course.
Even if you paid the town hall clerks extra for these special tasks, the financial outlay would not be even remotely near what it is costing the municipal coffers ever month.
Going back to the case of Motril, these advisers receive between 18,000 and 42,000 annually, after heroically reducing their number from 20 to 16. The 13 councillors get between 32,000 and 42,000 – the Mayor and another councillor have renounced their salary, mind – chapeau.
Accordingly, the Motril taxpayer has to find 665,691 euros every year for the town-hall staff. Tellingly, after cutting three adviser jobs, the saving is only 33,000 euros – although the Mayor claims that the saving is around 300,000.
So, you do the maths: they axe three advisers jobs and save 33,000 euros? All the advisers got more than 11,000 euros, so what happened?
Anyway, we leave you to ruminate over the case of the Mayoress of Manilva, who has just given director jobs to her sister and daughter in law.
Even though the town only has 14,000 inhabitants, with these two new additions, Manilva now has 20 Area Directors. Is it any wonder why the town hall has to cough up nearly half a million euros in salaries for these 20 advisers every year?
(News: Andalucia)