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What appears to be the problem is that the said 22 policemen are knocking up more than eight hours a day and when computed on a yearly basis, by the end of September, all the said policemen will have used up their year’s quota of work hours, according to each on of the opposition parties; i.e., the PP, IU and PA.
The fact of the matter is, to dated, 576 hours of the yearly (without going into overtime) 1,272 have been used up. This means that there are 696 hours, 87, eight-hour shifts left.
The problem is that the governing party (PSOE) with the backing of all the opposition parties, agreed to do away with overtime within the municipal police department – this was an austerity measure. According to the opposition, by September all the permitted hours will be used up. The idea was to have been that the policemen would be compensated with time off, in lieu of payment, for the any extra hours worked… which simply has not happened.
The Spokesman for the PA, Juan Eloy Correa pointed out, “none of the policemen have gone on leave to date, and as public functionaries they have the right to take their holidays in August, which will be chaos.”
A Spokesman for the IU goes further and considers that this situation has been deliberately provoked to justify three new posts; the opposition parties believe they already know who is waiting in the wings to fill the posts; all PSOE, card-carrying candidates. These extra posts will burden the municipal coffers by another 81,000 euros per annum.
The terms of the agreement between all political parties included that no new public posts could be created, barring urgent necessity…
But what does the governing party say about all this? Vice-Mayor, Maria de Carmen Rodríguez explained that Salobreña has one Chief Sub-Inspector, five policemen of officer rank and 24 policemen, one of whom is employed in an administrative position. This statement puts the opposition staff figure of 20 into question. She went on to explained that four policemen patrol the town 24 hours a day, whilst four are working at the police station; i.e., four on the beat and four in the station. Each works 1,632 hours on the American shift system.
Nobody, she says, works more than eight hours a day, as that would be illegal. The town’s policemen, she claims, work the same amount of hours as any other public employee on the municipal payroll. She assured that there would be police coverage for the rest of the year, and that the situation where just one policeman was available for the last two months of the year during the previous administration’s term would not happen again.
Staff holidays are guaranteed, she says, and there is only one small problem in the second half of June around San Juan. Extra policing hours are being compensated with time off, she claims.
Well, we shall just have to see, won’t we?
(News: Salobrena, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)