PSOE Blames Flawed Rules for Orihuela Taxi Licence Chaos
Orihuela’s Socialist Party has accused the City Council of mishandling the award of new taxi licences, claiming poorly drafted rules and allegedly disproportionate exclusions have left the process stalled for more than a year. Socialist councillor Luis Quesada said delays were not simply the result of a complicated administrative procedure but arose from errors and […] The post PSOE Blames Flawed…
The Socialist Party in Orihuela has criticized the City Council for mishandling the distribution of new taxi licences, blaming flawed rules and allegedly discriminatory exclusions for the lengthy delays. Socialist councillor Luis Quesada argued that issues with the regulations, approved by the municipal government, led to the process being stuck for over a year.
Documents reviewed by the PSOE revealed that the council took an entire year to approve the rules, followed by several more months to form an assessment committee to evaluate applications. During this period, the committee and the council's General Secretariat warned that several scoring criteria could not be applied fairly due to unclear definitions.
Consequently, the committee declined to recommend any applicants for licences and requested a formal amendment to the rules, citing concerns over the objective assessment of applicants' professional experience, language skills, and unemployment periods. Applicants who were provisionally excluded due to conditions they deemed too restrictive, including those with official training certificates from public education centres, were deemed to have lacked sufficient Spanish knowledge.
Despite council officials acknowledging the technical issues months ago, no decisive action has been taken to resume the process. Instead, the Transport Department has requested additional reports from legal and local development officials to determine whether the regulations need amending, or if the process should be returned to an earlier stage or adopt a system from a neighboring municipality like Torrevieja.
Quesada criticized the succession of reviews as indicative of poor planning and inefficiency in managing a process that should have been concluded months earlier. He emphasized that the delays are harming applicants who remain unable to work while awaiting a decision and negatively impacting residents and visitors, who continue to face a shortage of taxis, particularly during peak periods.
The PSOE has urged the municipal government to rectify the issues promptly, ensure fair assessment of all applications, and provide the necessary legal safeguards to prevent further disputes. They called for the council to end the uncertainty and complete the award of additional licences as soon as possible, aiming to improve conditions for applicants and alleviate Orihuela's inadequate taxi service.
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