The Foment del Treball employer’s association yesterday asked the Government of the Generalitat not to blame specific sectors for the drought and, instead, demanded that the investments planned to solve the emergency be carried out. In a statement, the organization chaired by Josep Sánchez Llibre defended public-private collaboration as a way to provide urgent and also long-term solutions.
“This is not the time to blame economic, industrial, tourism, sports and municipal sectors,” Foment said in a press release. “We consider this indication inappropriate and that uncertainty is generated with new measures,” he added.
Foment’s comments come after the Government of the Generalitat announced the closure of showers in sports facilities and gyms and later denied it. “I was wrong, I didn’t explain myself well,” admitted the Acció Climàtica minister, David Mascort. What the Government wants to implement for now is that sports entities that decide to continue watering football fields or filling swimming pools must close the showers. The two actions are incompatible with each other.
“Many economic sectors have been suffering for some time from the consequences of the restrictions imposed so far, which will worsen with the entry into emergency of the main area of ??the internal basins, where six million people live,” Foment said in the statement.
“We demand leadership from the Government to execute with maximum diligence the priority investments to face the drought emergency, which must be done through collaboration,” the employers’ association insisted. “We maintain our call for collaboration between the public and private sectors to provide urgent and also long-term solutions that allow us to address the water shortage that Catalonia is experiencing.” In the opinion of the employers’ association, “only through alliances with companies, which can offer the knowledge, experience and capacity to respond to this major challenge, will the necessary works be carried out.”
Foment believes that the different structural projects it has on the table can be financed with public-private funds or with European Next Generation funds. The latter “offer great opportunities that we are not taking advantage of.” Among the new projects, infrastructure that allows us to regenerate water stands out. There are some companies in the sector such as Agbar that maintain that it is more efficient and economical to regenerate water than to desalin, for example.
The business organization recalled that the drought occurring in the internal basins of Catalonia is the most extreme since records have been recorded, both in terms of duration and the impact on economic sectors and the population as a whole.
The Government of the Generalitat plans to enter the emergency phase in the Ter-Llobregat water system in January and not in December as initially planned.