All the productive sectors of the Pitiusas are being affected, to a greater or lesser extent, by the stoppage of road transport of goods. Even so, they agree that the situation on the islands is nothing like what is being experienced on the mainland, where markets have supply problems and many warehouses can not cope to accumulate more material.
However, after nine days of consecutive strikes, the situation is getting worse. The straw that has broken the camel’s back has been that the big employers’ associations, Fenadismer, Fetransa and Feintra, have also joined the strike. “In Pimeef we belong to Fenadismer, but the members have the possibility to choose whether we want to work or not”, explains the president of the Freight Transport Association, José Raya, who adds that “ on Ibiza it has been decided we will not stop and we will not join the strike called next Monday”. Some will win and some will lose: while transport drivers working only on the island will not interrupt their activity, for those who work to transport material from the mainland things will be more complicated.
In fact, Raya knows firsthand the problems they are having to transport material to Eivissa since his company operates from Valencia. “We can’t load, we can’t enter industrial estates… in short, it’s not easy to work. We get calls from employees telling us that there are pickets insulting them and stopping them.” He refers to hot spots. “Yesterday they sent us a whatsapp informing us that they were going to cut the AP7 from 8 o’clock in the morning. In Valencia there are several industrial parks that present problems to collect the material and there are construction warehouses where more than a hundred platforms have been left sitting there. It is material that is already sold, but can’t reach the island,” laments Raya.
For all these reasons, he is critical of the Government’s offer to subsidize the price of diesel for carriers with direct aid of 500 million euros. “It is selling smoke because absolutely nothing has been specified,” he insists. And he gives several examples, such as Portugal, where diesel has been reduced to 40 cents per liter for professionals in the sector. “Here they tell us to wait until the 29th,” he says.
The Pimeef will join the strike called this Wednesday by UGT and CCOO under the slogan ‘Contain prices to stop the deterioration of our living conditions’.
For the full article, please visit Diario de Ibiza website here.