Hear
CÓRDOBA.- The president of the Chamber of Deputies, Martin Menemis especially attentive to what happens in The Riojadistrict for which he was elected and in which he was a candidate for governor: Last Saturday he was there, visited some of the stopped public works and promised their reactivation. The governor Ricardo Quintela He accuses the national government – and its funding cuts – of causing them to stop.
Menem, who questions the use of resources by Quintela, announced: “We have managed to unlock the funds to finish the road that goes from El Dique to Las Padercitas. It is great news that I wanted to share with all of you and ratify the commitment of the national government to carrying out the works that are pending.” He uploaded an image of himself to the networks, before taking the plane back to the city of Buenos Aires, with a blue folder from the Ministry of Public Works.
Marcelo Aguilar Lopez
Martín Menem’s announcement occurs in a context in which the governors of different provinces hold meetings with the national government to sign transfer agreements for public works without the necessary resources to execute them. Quintela, the president who has the most public confrontation with Milei, is not in the game.
This week Menem has the challenge of returning to the lower house of the Bases Law. The four Rioja deputies are from UP, clearly opponents, and voted against the law.
14 months ago, then-president Alberto Fernandez -who traveled to La Rioja to congratulate the re-elected Quintela- toured the work mentioned by Martín Menem. This section had been inaugurated a few days before but in reality it is half of a six-kilometer project that was put out to tender in 2012. The work was to begin in 2013 and be completed in 2016. Now the promises are back.
According to national data, in La Rioja there are 44 works that have been started and are currently unfinished. Of that total, Public Works would consider nine “priorities.” The work on Route 75, which now returned to the center of the scene, was included in the so-called “Plan Argentina Grande” of the Fernández administration and It includes 6.6 kilometers of new layout and two tunnels that cross under the Velazco mountains. It is a mountain road that connects the provincial capital with the northern departments.
Martín Menem also uploaded a video recorded on the networks at the El Chacho roundabout, in the capital of Rioja, where he ironically said that “as some call it, it is the ’roundabout of the bins’ because of the orange bins” where there are signs where reads “work suspended by the national government.” The deputy says that the work should have been completed in September 2023 and that the Nation sent the money to the Province to pay.
With the management of Javier Milei, he affirms, “that will not happen again; [el Gobierno] will send the money directly to the companies and will control that they finish them as quickly as possible so the money does not remain in gray”. Investment in the Nation’s public works in the provinces – not counting interjurisdictional works – fell 86.1% in real terms year-on-year between January and May, while in the districts real investment collapsed by around 60% in real terms. During that period, they turned to La Rioja $188 million, which implies a real year-on-year drop of 99%according to data from the Open Budget.
15 days ago, Alfredo MenemMinister of Social Development of The Rioja, criticized his cousin and blamed him for “hindering” the sending of funds to the province. “Martín grew up in Buenos Aires. He doesn’t know any neighborhood in our citythe less he knows the interior of the province. Far away can know the need of the Riojans“, he pointed.
