City Cabinet Chief Horacio Rodríguez Larreta.
City Cabinet chief Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, commented today that the transfer of the subway system, which was approved by lawmakers yesterday in the Lower House of Congress, should still be approved by the City Legislature before completely going through in order for it to be considered «valid.»
In response to yesterday’s approval of the long-disputed subway transfer bill in the National Congress, Larreta made it clear that the City government was unsatisfied, and that before the transfer of Premetro tram, subway lines and 33 bus services goes through completely, it should be passed by the City Legislature also, in order for it to be “valid.”
The city cabinet chief made the statements during an interview with a local radio station this morning and said, “this (the transfer) should also be approved by the City Legislature in order for it to be valid. We said that we would take 90 days to make the decision, so that we could see what state the subways were in. We saw that there was a commitment made by the national government since 2006 to carry out a number of works, which included a number of security works.»
As previously pointed out by Mayor Mauricio Macri himself and by his deputy, María Eugenia Vidal, the cost of carrying out the outstanding works would cost thousands of pesos far beyond what the city government budget can stretch to.
«These promised works were simply not carried out. We cannot take responsibility for old debts that don’t belong to us,» Larreta furthered.
“The transport system collapsed here and we can’t run the risk of letting something like what happened at Once station, to happen again. The problem is in the lack of investment over the course of many years. The government needs to acknowledge this failure. It’s not up to everyone else to cover the cost of their failure over these years,” Larreta concluded.
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