Oviedo (EFE).- The Vice President and Minister of Autonomous Administration, Environment and Climate Change, Juan Cofiño, has assured this Monday that the Government of the Principality maintains “constant pressure” before the central Executive for the completion of the southwestern highway (A-63) and, in particular, to finish the stretch to La Espina, now underway.
Cofiño made this statement during his appearance at the General Meeting to report on the execution of the Plan for the Southwest and the Demographic Plan, which, as he stressed, are offering “good” results, according to the study carried out by the University of Oviedo.
As stated, it has indicated that the Government executed 63.1% of the Principality’s Demographic Plan (2017-2027), with an investment of more than 1,247 million of the 2,275 planned, and 87.7% of the special plan for councils of the Southwest (2015-2025) until the year 2021, with an expense of 222 million over the estimated 253.
The vice-president pointed out that in about fifteen days the preliminary draft of the Demographic Challenge Law will enter the General Meeting, which, according to what he has specified, will no longer be able to be approved in the remainder of the legislature.
In this sense, Cofiño has rejected that this norm is electoral or propaganda, as has been crossed out by the opposition, since, as he has specified, “it was not foreseen that it could be approved in the current legislature given the complexity of the norm.”
In order for the demographic challenge in a region with a population as aging as Asturias to be possible “it must be established through a consensus of all the political parties that must be maintained over time, with short, medium and long-term measures, since it is a task that will last several decades”, he pointed out.
To this end, he added, the Principality will deploy “all the efforts and policies that are necessary to reverse depopulation and make the most depopulated areas attractive.”
Opposition criticism
In the turn of establishing positions, the PP deputy Cristina Vega has described with “a giant suspense” the policies for the demographic challenge that she has indicated that they are “electoralist” and “propaganda”, some criticisms shared by the deputy of Podemos Nuria Rodríguez, who has also censured the action carried out by the Commissioner for the Demographic Challenge, Jaime Izquierdo.
Faced with this, the counselor has vindicated the work of the commissioner, since he is “a figure that does not have an administrative management structure but rather a task of coordinating the policies of the Executive”.
For his part, the deputy for Citizens Carlos Fanjul has opted to promote the care economy to serve an aging population, something that in his opinion would generate economic activity.
Both the coordinator of the IU of Asturias, Ovidio Zapico, and the spokesman for the Forum in the General Meeting, Adrián Pumares, have lamented that the Demographic Challenge Law will not be approved in this legislature and have urged to create wealth in the wings through the promotion of industrial activity.
Finally, the Vox parliamentarian Sara Álvarez Rouco has criticized that the Government has not implemented “not a single measure that acts to favor the birth rate, nor tax reductions for companies” while the deputy of the Mixed Group, Armando Fernández Bartolomé , has called for “political leadership” to act on the demographic challenge. EFE