The Mayor of Zubia (PP) has raised the salary of the Councillor of the Economy and in passing awarded himself a salary 45,000 euros. Oh, and he has raised the expense quota for attending a council meeting from 113 euro to 195 euros.
Now this is surprising, not only because 5.5m euros of the 11.4m-euro, municipal budget goes on salaries, but because the Town Hall recently laid off ten municipal workers, the majority of whom earned 1,000 euros a month, because the town couldn’t afford to keep them on.
The opposition complain that the Council now has five councillors on the payroll on a part-time basis, plus, three advisors. The Spokesperson for the IU, Mercedes Díaz Aróstegui, points out that there are now nine people working in the urban-planning department and that whereas the Town Hall used to earn 90,000 euros a year in fees for building licences, it now pulls in 30,000 euros, but despite this 66% drop, the Municipal Survey has received a pay rise and two assistants earn an extra 9,000 euros between them per annum.
Meanwhile the Councillor for Sports and Economy now earns 32.205 euros a year whereas he started off the election term on a part-time contract. The Governing Council Spokesperson said that this generosity is a reward for his “exclusive dedication, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”
As for the Mayor, Antonio Iglesias, he now costs the public coffers 45,000 euros, plus his Social Security payments, whereas before he just claimed expenses for attending council business. Again, the Council Spokesperson explained that now that the town had paid off many of its debts, now was the time that “a job receives its just retribution.”
As the headline of the article states, the country’s politicians are just not listening to the discontent on the streets and the growing anger at the “business as usual” attitude of many politicians, as families are evicted from their homes, as the unemployment queues grow, as pensioners struggle to maintain their adult offspring and their grandchildren on miserable pensions.
(News: Zubia, Granada, Andalucia)