The input provided by EMATSA (Empresa Municipal Mixta D’Aigues De Tarragona SA) illustrates the challenges faced by the water sector, not only in Spain, but across many of the Member States. The company has put forward a contingency plan – which is being constantly updated according to eventual developments in the Country – in order to promptly address the issue.
EMATSA created a crisis committee to efficiently manage the situation. Administratively speaking, their main measures are in line with most European recommendations and consist in facilitating telework, cancelling or postponing travels, and promoting additional sanitary precautions. We must highlight that those measures already represent important additional costs for companies, not only in a strictly financial spectrum, but as well as in terms of managerial capacity.
Furthermore, they have been mobilizing efforts in order to promote stock reviews – to guarantee an optimal allocation of resources –, to maintain all services in place and properly running and to ensure that new demands will be attended. We must emphasize that ensuring those provisions is becoming increasingly challenging in the context of staff shortages.
EMATSA will already need to make use of their Social Fund to cope with the situation at this stage. They have stated that, in case of further needs, they will have to seek other financial mechanisms to administer the negative impacts, which so far, they cannot anticipate.
Website: www.ematsa.cat/