COVID-19 could not be understood as an excuse to eliminate elementary services within its public service obligation.
The Popular Parliamentary Group has presented a Proposal not of Law in Congress in which the Government is urged "to recover the railway services that were being provided until the declaration of the state of alarm by COVID-19", once that statement has already been finalized.
Likewise, this initiative is accompanied by a request for the appearance of the Minister of Transportation, José Luis Ábalos, precisely to "account for the reasons why different railway services are not expected to resume after the end of the mobility restrictions brought to carried out on the occasion of the alarm by the Covid-19 ”.
In the explanatory memorandum of the Proposal, signed by the Group's spokesperson, Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo, together with the spokesperson for Transport, Andrés Lorite, it is highlighted that “COVID-19 could not be understood to have become the excuse of the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda to eliminate elementary services within its obligation of public service ”.
THE OFFER MUST BE TAKEN AGAIN IN ALL SERVICES
The initiative recalls that Royal Decree 463/2020, of March 14, declaring the state of alarm for the management of the health crisis situation caused by COVID-19, established in its article 14 different measures regarding transport with the aim of restricting mobility.
In this sense, the regulation addressed the reduction of the total supply of operations in the different railway services by certain percentages, which have been subsequently modified through different orders from the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and the Urban Agenda.
After the expiration of the state of alarm, the proposal stresses that once the health emergency is over there is no explanation for why different railway services have stopped being provided. However, this is the situation that is taking place on different routes in which the offer prior to March 14 has not yet returned. Collectives and organizations from all over the national territory have asked for the replacement of all these railway circulations that are currently suspended and thus contributing to the isolation of these territories.