Eu peço desculpa por este artigo abaixo estar em Inglês.
Vou só traduzir umas frases, que acho que são as mais importantes:
"Os 120 trabalhadores do município de Moratalla não são pagos desde Maio."
"Moratalla e a sua divida imensa são o espelho de muitas cidades em Espanha".
Ora um pais muito mais rico do que o nosso, se está assim, então nós...
Não deve estar a faltar muito tempo...
Cá fica o artigo no seu original:
Spanish towns face funding crisis, rack up debts
By ALAN CLENDENNING , 08.13.11, 06:33 AM EDT
MORATALLA, Spain -- In this hillside town, topped by a medieval castle and surrounded by olive groves, the 120 municipal workers haven't been paid since May. Police have new orders not to use their patrol cars unless they get word of a traffic accident or a crime in progress.
The town pool is closed for the summer despite temperatures over 104 (40 Celsius) in the shade. Fees for the public day-care center have doubled. Water bills will soon go up 33 percent and local business owners are seething over euro9 million ($12.7 million) in unpaid bills owed by the town hall, much of it to them.
Spain's 8,115 municipalities are being hit by a crushing revenue hangover from a nearly two-decade building boom that went bust in 2008. Officials in Moratalla believe they are the first in Spain to publicly declare their town is on the verge of going broke - and that the only way out is an unprecedented program of drastically reducing services while boosting local taxes and fees in an austerity drive that could last eight years.
Moratalla and its mammoth debt "are the mirror image of a lot of towns" that have not yet fully admitted the extent of their dire financial circumstances, said Deputy Mayor Juan Soria. "These are hard measures, but they're necessary and I think we have to reinvent ourselves because we've lived beyond our means and we have to lower expectations."
There is growing concern in Spain that municipalities and regional governments are increasingly in danger of being unable to meet their obligations. Just this week in the region of Castilla la Mancha, not far from Moratalla, three out of every four pharmacies closed in a "strike" to protest late payment on euro125 million ($178.12 million) owed to them by the regional government for prescription drugs citizens get from Spain's regionally controlled national health care system.
Local and regional governments took on big obligations during Spain's boom years as their coffers swelled with revenue that has now dried up.
Fonte: http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2011/08/13/general-eu-spain-broke-pueblos_8621879.html
Eu peço desculpa mais uma vez pelo artigo estar em inglês.
E já agora, peço desculpa por estar a ser um bocadinho incendiário.
Mas isto, aplica-se...
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