Former president of the Cañas Sports Committee (CCDR) Victor Cantillano said in a letter to the city council that there has been a sanitary order on the city gym since 2018.
“The only thing I see is a total abandonment of the installations and nothing new. It’s so abandoned that last year a sanitary order was issued by the Health Ministry on the city gym,” Cantillano said.
After reviewing documents from the Cañas Health Ministry, The Voice Fact Checking found that this statement is true.
The former presidential made the statement during a city council meeting on February 4. Cantillano denounced the abandonment the installation suffers from after the national games in Guanacaste in 2014.
According to the former president, the city is to blame for the situation because of a lack of planning and investment in improvements for athletes.
The sanitary order was issued by the Health Ministry in November 2018 after a visit to the gym two months prior.
After the visit the ministry wrote a report which signals inconsistencies with the General Health Law for Opportunities for People with Disabilities. It highlights the lack of proper city maintenance at the installations.
After the report was published the health ministry issued the order and sent it to committee’s president at the time Glen Blanco Evans. The order requires CCDR to “present a plan with concrete actions and a work timeline for due implementation. But the problems haven’t been solved yet.
According to the sanitary order, not complying with obligations constitutes “disobedience of authority” which is a crime. The punishment for this infraction ranges from six months to three years in prison.
According to Esteban Alvarado, an attorney who specializes in public law, the penalty applies to all those who were president of the local sports committee. In other words, the penalty falls on whoever the order was issued to and all the sports committees that didn’t solve it.
“The penalty is prison, but that never happens. Generally, it is unpunished, save for cases that put people’s health at risk, or something really serious,” he said.
The new board of directors of the sports committee is required to solve the problems at the city gym and respond to the sanitary order.
Cantillano’s statement is true and directs attention to the maintenance of the sports complex.
Victor Cantillano was fired during the February 4th session after the city council annulled the election process over alleged irregularities.
The Voice Fact Checking is a project that checks public speeches made by mayors, regents and representatives from the province. We are going to corroborate the statements made by officials in city halls to make see if they are based on verifiable data.
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