In the first installment, it was explained how the lack of coherence between what was proposed to the Board of Directors and what was finally decided led to two of the five members resigning. On this occasion the issue is, what was the urgency that the Mayor’s Office had to insist on complying through Aguas y Aguas with a ruling from several years ago, just before due to electoral transparency, the mayors’ offices could not hire?
The Caimalito and Puerto Caldas case
Carlos Humberto Isaza was also consulted on this topic and responded: “Sadly, two communities that have high precariousness and a lot of marginality are not served by the company that should provide them. Then, very close to the day of resignation, the day before the Guarantees Law came into effect, they summoned us to an atypical extraordinary meeting. Like a meeting of a company like Aguas y Aguas, what was going to be done through chat, it was not a platform like Zoom or Team.”
“Gentlemen, why are we going to hold a meeting where there is no possibility of even having the dynamics of a virtual conversation? They responded that because the Law allows it. I read that as the circumstance that is adopted to try to prevent the debate from taking place. That day before, they asked us for authorization for the Municipality to sign two agreements with the Company, aimed at bringing a solution to Caimalito and another to Puerto Caldas. Through that chat I told them, don’t you think it’s very strange that we hold a meeting just the day before to authorize an agreement to carry out works in places that have such a critical social condition and that can be understood as a decision aimed at interfering with an electoral process that is in full progress?,” says Isaza.
The answer to why it was done that day was that they were complying with court rulings. “Well, let me look at the rulings,” but they were rulings from 2011, 12 years ago, “but they considered that this was the opportune time to enforce them.” Who is affected by the ruling? “If it affects the Municipality, it should be the one to carry it out, but the answer the mayor gave me was that ‘the Municipality did not have the operational capacity to carry out those activities.’ I can understand that not, but the thing is that the municipalities act through contracting and here they preferred to do it through Aguas y Aguas, because it has different peculiarities to make its investments due to its private administrative regime.”
Does Aguas y Aguas have the capacity to carry out this pair of agreements without interfering with the execution of its other activities? The response they gave to the restless member was positive. “It turns out that 15 days or a month later, they call us again to tell us that we had to reconsider the execution goals of the investments, because we are not being able to execute what is programmed and if we do not meet the goals, it will happen to us. “They are going to evaluate us poorly and the consequences will affect the company.”
When Dr. Carlos Humberto replied that they had recently been told that the agreements for these Municipal works did not put the Company’s ordinary activities at risk, he began to notice that there were circumstances that suggest that things are happening that do not exist. correspond to a serious execution of an administration applied to serving a company of this magnitude.
This is what the most advanced part of the Ptar 20 de Julio in Caimalito looks like.
From the Company
The resources for Caimalito and Puerto Caldas were approved, but what does not exist today are the contracts and for this reason the manager Leandro Jaramillo was asked: “The execution of the works depends on the approval of the Sanitation Plans and Management of discharges for each of the townships. Puerto Caldas was approved this Monday and with this we can proceed to contract the works. “The Caimalito Sanitation and Discharge Management Plan is under review.”
Everyday life in Caimalito
This place definitely looks like a Macondo town, the basic transportation is the bicycle; You can see boyfriends, parents and children, families and up to five friends pedaling horizontally and chatting calmly across the width of the street on a sleepy afternoon.
It can be said that Santiago de Jesús Peláez Henao is the living history of the township, he has it engraved in his mind and heart, he also arrived by bike to the interview. The years and the sun have given him the air of a patriarch and he leads three community organizations, among them he is the representative of the Aqueduct and Sewer company.
“The aqueduct and sewage project has been working on for two years, very slowly, it is going very slowly, it must be said, the system that exists is artisanal. They said they were 80% complete, but we as residents say no, because only two sectors have the network installed but it is not connected. We have always wondered why they did one thing first rather than the other, they should have built the pools first, the project has two WWTPs, one in 20 de Julio and the other in La Carbonera, where the treatment will be done, but they are still. , but they installed the pipe. In ignorance one says, this was the other way around.”
Regarding the layout of this project, Peláez also defines it as complex, because it is approximately seven kilometers, which is one of the causes that causes houses to collapse in the winter season. “Here the right to health should prevail and that has a lot of impact, because they are collectors in the water tributaries that we have. 10 years ago the first tender was $9,000 million and you know that when it is not executed, there is a wait and you have to expand, because that is not going to be enough. I have spoken with Dr. Leandro Jaramillo and the current administration so that everything does not end there and that the project is given continuity.”
Cipher
Caimalito has 22 thousand inhabitants spread across 10 sectors.