Rubbish complaints from residents pile up as Benalmádena attempts to get its bin lorries back

For weeks now social media networks have been ablaze with photographs, videos and comments about the accumulated rubbish or the lack of cleanliness in different streets and areas of the municipality of Benalmádena. The complaints began after the town council announced the award of the cleaning and waste collection service to the company FCC after the culmination of a process which, as in many other councils, had been delayed due to the difficulties involved in drawing up a tender that affects one of the most important and costly services, economically speaking, of a municipality.

The arrival of FCC, which has signed a ten-year contract with the council, for which it will pay around 8 million euros per year, meant the farewell of the former concessionaire of the service, the company Urbaser, although this situation is far from resolved.

According to sources familiar with the case, the town hall and Urbaser are currently in dispute over the ownership of all the cleaning machinery that the company used to clean the municipality. Urbaser understands that it is theirs while the council considers it to be municipal property. For this reason, and until the judge makes a decision, all the machinery has been parked on a plot in Avenida Retamar, in Benalmádena Pueblo, since June.

In principle this should not be a problem as the contract signed by the council with FCC includes the replacement and renewal of the entire fleet of vehicles, as well as the replacement of containers and the renovation of the ecological islands. The problem lies in the fact that the new concessionaire has an adaptation period of one year and it is within this period of time that all the vehicles have to be incorporated.

"Although they have that deadline, new vehicles are already arriving," said the councillor for waste, Juan Olea, who last Friday presented three of them to the media together with the mayor, Juan Antonio Lara. Likewise, "the company has provided bridging vehicles until all the new ones arrive", assured the councillor, who did not specify the number of vehicles that are operating at the moment to clean the streets of Benalmádena, given the different circumstances mentioned and taking into account that it is high tourist season and the population is multiplied.

"It is true that there have been occasional problems on some routes due to vehicle breakdowns, but these have been solved and normality has been restored," said Olea, who, despite sending out a reassuring message, has spent weeks personally supervising the cleaning work being carried out in the streets, even at night.

During this time, he has also insisted on repeated interventions to ask for the collaboration of the public. "It is essential that we all do our bit to make Benalmádena shine more brightly every day, since in the coming months there will be a big change, because the cleaning service will reach new areas and with more machinery and vehicles for action."