Staff in the Orihuela courts have for years been demanding the replacement of the inadequate air conditioning system in the building that they occupy in la Plaza Santa Lucía.
Judges, magistrates and clerks continually complain to the authorities about the system’s deficiencies and with the onset of higher than average temperatures, which will undoubtedly increase even more in the coming weeks, and following a meeting of the Magistrates Board a petition has been submitted to the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), expressing their dissatisfaction.
The Leader newspaper has reported similar problems with the system in both 2013 and 2014but the staff say they are no further forward. The air-conditioning is totally ineffective and neither are the staff able to open windows so it is not possible.
The situation became so bad that the Dean of the court, Judge Joaquina de la Peña, suspended all activity in the building for 2 days last week due to high temperatures as Health and Safety law requires that work be abandoned should the temperature exceed 27 degrees C
He said that officials working on the second floor of the building which houses the offices of prosecutor and the courts of Instruction 2 and 4 are the most badly affected as they have been without any form of ventilation system for over six months.
Last year the solution was to bring in 4 large mobile aircon units from the Department of Justice. But even they are nowhere near satisfactory as, whilst the units are in operation, the extraction hose needs to be vented through an open window, as a result of which the hot air just flows back in.
Added to this is the excessive noise of the devices, so much so that some of the office staff have chosen to switch them off rather than suffer. One worker said that even when they are operating on full power the cool air hardly gets beyond the immediate area of the aircon unit itself.
Many of the staff have taken the matter into their own hands by bringing in their own electric fans. But by early afternoon the temperature is still stifling with thermometers exceeding thirty degrees,
Filed under: http://www.theleader.info/article/47316/
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