The high cost of living in the Pitiusas is making it increasingly difficult to fill staff vacancies in Administration services, especially in the case of hospitals, health centers and state security forces. The seriousness of the problem of housing has reached a point where “many health staff are leaving because they cannot afford a room, they are sleeping on sofas, in their cars or in tents in the garden of some colleagues,” denounced Rosa Planells, the regional secretary of the Union of Nursing Technicians (USAE).
This outcry was evident yesterday in front of the headquarters of the Insular Directorate of the General Administration of the State, in the Casa del Mar de Vila, where fifty people gathered called by the Platform for the equality of public services (Unisep), composed of seven unions. Not only civil servant staff were mobilized, but there were also some representatives of neighborhood associations to show their solidarity with the cause.
While a nurse from Fuerteventura or La Gomera receives a residence allowance of 426 euros per month, their colleagues on Ibiza must settle for 89.
The demonstrators carried inflatable bananas as a symbol of the Canary Islands, the autonomous community they use as an example to remember the discrimination they suffer in the Balearic Islands. “If we talk about the double or triple insularity, the bonus they charge there comes to quadruple or quintuple that of Ibiza and Formentera,” criticized Victor Villatoro, the president of the teachers’ union ANPE.
Disproportionate staff residency allowances
Thus, while a nurse from Fuerteventura or La Gomera receives a residence allowance of 426 euros per month, their colleagues on Ibiza must settle for 89. All this when in the Balearic Islands “the shopping basket, housing and gasoline is more expensive,” said Chechu Enrique, the provincial secretary of the Police Justice Union (Jupol).
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