The odyssey of finding an appointment for the ITV in the Valencian Community

If you are Valencian and have to pass the ITV in the coming days or weeks, you surely already know how difficult it is to get an appointment, and not only in big cities. In most stations you cannot book an appointment even for the month of July and, as spaces open up, they fill up instantly. This is causing some users to have chosen to travel to other autonomous regions to achieve that precious label, as Vicente Inglada, secretary of the Consumers Union of the Valencian Community, explains to this newspaper.

Driving with an expired MOT can result in fines of up to 200 euros. As the Government delegate in the Valencian Community, Pilar Bernabé, said a few days ago, the State security forces cannot turn a blind eye, even though getting an appointment has become an almost impossible task.

Inglada says that they are receiving up to 14 calls a day about this issue, a very high number, complaining about a service that became public after years of private concession. By the way, the privatization during Eduardo Zaplana’s time of the Technical Vehicle Inspection in exchange for commissions has been on trial for a few weeks in the City of Justice of Valencia and is one of the pillars of the Erial case.

The Valencian government admits the evidence of the difficulty of achieving an appointment for the coming months at the stations of the Community. They explain that the ITVs have 1,000 employees, 25% less than what would be necessary to respond to demand, which also these months, when the summer holidays approach, usually have a higher peak. The head of the consumer organization explains that it was common for staff reinforcements and overtime at this time.

By passing the service into the hands of the Administration, the Department of Innovation, Industry, Commerce and Tourism points out, the personnel hiring processes have slowed down. “It is not a question of money, but of administration,” add the same sources who recall that the public company Sitval (Valencian Society for Technical Vehicle Inspection), with seven million profits, is one of the most profitable in the Valencian public sector. The problem is that it is not so easy to make hiring personnel more flexible. Nor can overtime or productivity bonuses be paid, as was the case before, although the department headed by Nuria Montes is looking for a legal formula to promote productivity.

However, the same sources point out, the first major problem they encountered upon arrival was the equalization of salaries for all workers, since depending on the concessionaire, the conditions of the workers were one or another. Another handicap, they argue, was solving the problem with the Riba-roja ITV – the third largest in the Valencian Community that serves 100,000 vehicles a year.

The land where it is located had been sold to a businessman, who, luckily, has agreed to maintain the station’s infrastructure for three years (extendable for another two), while the Consell tries to set up a new infrastructure in Torrent that must replace to that of Riba-roja.

With these problems solved, we now seek to avoid the current collapse of the service. To this end, this week and the urgent call for next Thursday of a Sitval Board of Directors has been announced to approve the award of the new contracts for the computer system and telephone service.

The amount of both contracts rises to 3,590,000 euros, which will allow the staff of the call reception service for appointments to be doubled. The Valencian government defends that these awards will allow solving the problems detected in the previous appointment due to the “chaotic inheritance” of the previous executive. At the same time, Minister Montes announced that the process for the temporary hiring of 250 new inspectors is already well underway.

This ordinary bag has yet to be brought forward. What was signed last Monday between Sitval and the CCOO and UGT unions is the call for an urgent temporary hiring pool to cover vacations and sick leave, although only for inspectors. UGT explains that this will serve to “relieve” the service, since there have been uncovered sick leave for months, but they point out that it is insufficient and point to the need to approve the ordinary pool (250) to really reinforce the service, especially in the areas of the south of Valencia and north of Castellón.

A process that cannot be delayed, since they comment in UGT that in the coming months, an “avalanche” of appointment requests is expected due to the delayed effects of the paralysis suffered by Covid.

However, the Department of Industry reiterates that the service will continue to be public and that it will not be privatized again. “A reversal is not contemplated, it is one of the most profitable services and the objective is for it to work well,” the same sources point out.

And while everything is resolved, there are those who try to do business with the desperation of users who cannot get an appointment. A few days ago, the Conselleria itself warned of the existence of a fraudulent website (https://sitval.net/) that impersonates that of the ITV. A portal that, posing as the official website, has been charging users to obtain false appointments for inspections at all stations in the Valencian Community. At the moment, Industry has no evidence that appointments are being resold, but they do not rule out that it may be happening, as happens when this type of phenomenon occurs.