You would be wrong to think that the staff who looked after the Almuñécar bird park have gone; despite not receiving a penny, they stay because of their charges.
The Aquarium’s closed and the staff dismissed without any compensation but the staff at the bird park have turned up every day since it was closed by the Town Hall to look after the birds; or at least try to.
But they have their limit, too: “We can’t carry on like this. We haven’t been paid since June and we see that we have been forgotten. We’ve got families to feed and mortgages to pay, but its seems like the Town Hall couldn’t care less about us or the birds that are dying – six have already died owing to a lack of specialist care. Tourists who visit are surprised and angry to see the gates closed,” said one of the workers there.
They feel that the only support that they receive is from the ex-workers from the Aquarium – others say that they are backed by the CA (Benavides party). They feel that they have been used and deceived. They are especially incensed by a comment made before the media by somebody in the Town Hall that things are in a state of ill-repair because they haven’t looked after them, or even broken them themselves – they say that this is blatantly untrue.
Workers from the aquarium say that when they received news that they were being replaced, they went out of their way to mark the tanks with instructions on the care of the specimens within, so accusations of abandoning the fish to their fate and leaving the place in a mess, etc, are groundless.
Returning to the Bird Park, one worker explained: “When the biologists, Katie and Luis, left in September because they hadn’t been paid since June, the bird park was left without specialist care. José Maya and the municipal vet took over the feeding. Since then six birds have died, some of them the most rare and expensive ones in the park, which is the case of the star attractions in the installations: two Anodorhynchus hyacinthinus (Hyacinth Macaw – see photo) and one Bycanistes buccinator (Hornbill trumpeter). They’ve also lost a peacock.
One of the park cleaners warned the Town Hall on three occasions that one of the birds was dying, but to no avail, he claims.
(News: Almunecar, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)