Las Palmas De Gran Canaria (EFE) and move towards a more sustainable production model.
This was stated this Tuesday by its owners, Ángel Víctor Torres and Pedro Ortega, before inaugurating the first Forum for Public-Private Collaboration, promoted by the employers’ association of Las Palmas with the aim of generating a space for debate around this formula, which, according to the European Union, should guide the socio-economic recovery of the continent.
“In the Canary Islands we cannot be less. We understand that public-private collaboration has certain problems associated with the mistrust that exists between the public and private sectors, a barrier that must be overcome at dialogue tables to get the most out of this way of working, Ortega said.
“Thinking that companies are only going to get performance and they are not going to comply with the service or that the Administration is going with the idea of stopping, that must be overcome,” he added.
The business leader believes that there are issues in which progress can be made, among which he has cited the existing bureaucratic and legal “rigidity” and the confidence that investors must have in the public administration, both towards contracts and contractors.
“It cannot be that public contracts are signed, then the minimum interprofessional wage is modified and then the contract cannot be adapted because the Administration has changed the rules,” he said.
Ortega advocates “removing public-private collaboration from the political and public debate”, which is a favorable instrument that must be taken advantage of, since, in addition, it allows attracting and retaining talent and investment.
The president of the CCE also considers that this formula can be very useful when executing public spending, especially European funds, although he believes that it is necessary to look for “more flexible legislation adapted to the times, that works better”.
Health, education, industry, tourism or energy are some of the areas in which, according to the CCE, public-private collaboration is viable and pertinent.
“It is the way and we have to do it together. As Darwin said, those who collaborate and improvise effectively evolve and prevail. Society has faced important challenges during this time and it is time to work together, as we have done in the pandemic. I had the experience of being in the public sector, now I have the experience of being in the private sector and I have seen that there are things that can be done, what is needed is to have spaces for dialogue”, he asserted.
For the President of the Canary Islands Government, Ángel Víctor Torres, this forum should serve to thank the work carried out by the CCE these four years, during the legislature to fight the pandemic, “in which the key to the union between the public and private to overcome the tremendous adversities we have had”.
Torres has stressed that, during the confinement, the regional Executive “only had collaboration from the private sector to bring material from China and Brazil to support the health sector” and has revealed that what the businessmen requested is that they not be given “or publicity no prominence.”
The regional president also thanked the business community for the support it has given in this legislature to both the Reactive Plan and the Canarian Agenda for Sustainable Development, with which, in his opinion, “they have left their mark on the Canary Islands that they want for the future ”.
In Torres’s opinion, “we have all learned” in the pandemic, before which “ERTEs already existed”, although they were not used, so that in “other crises there were only layoffs”.
“On that occasion it was understood that before the closure of the entire economy, only the public sector remained and financing was obtained from Europe and ERTE, which were essential so that the relationship between the employee and the company did not break and the employers also knew how to understand it. It has been possible to carry out a labor reform with the unanimous vote of the Government, employers and unions, something that had never happened before and, therefore, that is the way to go”, Torres stressed. EFE
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