Orihuela brings repairs to playgrounds to the heart of the urban area

First there were the districts and now the works on playgrounds will reach the very heart of the urban area. The PP-Vox government team has taken a new step forward in the necessary renovation of many children's play areas, which have already been in deterioration for many years. The next areas to be intervened will be the Ocarasa parks, Plaza San Sebastián and the Jardines del Príncipe. The arrangements in these three green areas have been put out to tender with a base budget of 27,550 euros (without taxes). The companies will have until Tuesday of next week to present their offers.

In the same report evaluating the project, the City Council acknowledges being aware of the general need to adapt the equipment in municipal playgrounds, since many of them have significant deficiencies that require immediate action in order to guarantee safety. of its users. The first phase of action, they point out, will be undertaken in the city.

The planned actions will consist of the replacement of flexible rubber pavement, its removal and transfer to an authorized landfill. The paint and varnish of the equipment will also be cleaned and sanded, since there are many unprotected interior wooden parts. Likewise, swings will be replaced in some and a review of the fastenings and screws in existing play elements, including the placement of plugs.

The execution period is just one month from the date of signing the staking document. The prices that have been taken, for their part, are those currently in force in the market for materials, machinery and labor.

This is the first major investment made by the City Council since a group of parents went out to protest, not only on social networks, but also on the street itself and in the face of frustration over the poor state of the playgrounds. The first response from the Department of Infrastructure was to undertake repairs in half a dozen parks in districts, the most popular. In this case it was done thanks to the fact that this type of maintenance actions, according to the mayor Víctor Valverde, are included in the management contract that the municipal company Ildo maintains with the City Council.

The same group of parents also recently registered more than 900 signatures with the City Council to urge the Infrastructure Councilor to undertake these arrangements as quickly as possible. The response in this way is already beginning to occur in the absence of work reaching the coast, where children's play areas have also proliferated as the urbanization process has progressed. An evolution that has left behind many points in urbanizations that have been without maintenance practically since the moment those children's areas were installed.

Valverde has never shied away from responding to criticism and has always acknowledged, at least in his public statements, that children's play areas required urgent intervention. He has also shown on several occasions his understanding of many parents who see how their children must use facilities in a deplorable and, in some cases, also dangerous state.

External report

According to a report that the City Council commissioned in 2021 from the Technological Institute of Children's Products and Leisure (Aiju), the investment to prepare all the parks at that time amounted to a non-negligible figure of 600,000 euros. The document, in turn, cost the municipal coffers about 14,250 euros, at a rate of about 95 euros per children's area.

A difficulty in this renovation is the high number of acts of vandalism and that, in addition, Orihuela added 50 new playgrounds between 2007 and 2011 alone as a result of the large amount of money that entered the municipal coffers from the Government's 'Plan E'. of Zapatero and the 'Trust Plan' of the Generalitat.

The drafting of the projects to renovate the Glorieta and the Severo Ochoa, on the other hand, have also recently gone through bidding. The financing of the execution of the works is guaranteed by aid from the Provincial Council worth 605,783 euros

The Los Arcos walkway is illuminated again

The Department of Infrastructure has repaired the lighting on the Los Arcos walkway. This bridge over the Segura has a lighting system embedded at the height of the handrail, which was not working for about four years. The system used for commissioning consisted of placing lighting with a 15-watt LED strip, with a color temperature of 4000 Kº, embedded in the handrails.