The Socialist Party will move forward with a National Climate Recovery, Stabilization and Resilience Program. The socialists gathered several contributions from experts and, after the National Secretariat meeting, agreed on a set of measures that they will propose to the Government.
The PS understands that the Calamity Situation should not be judged week by week and calls for the “reassessment of the need to integrate other municipalities into the respective scope, namely in the districts of Aveiro and Coimbra and Lezíria do Tejo.”
A socialist source tells DN that the PS considers that for a better response to emergency situations, the Calamity Situation should be established for a longer period of time. Not case, Carneiro suggested the possibility of establishing a deadline “between three and six months”.
Another future concern is resolving the communications crisis and, in the document, PS presents the possibility of providing a service roamingas happens abroad, where the user can, through a network of which he is not a customer, have guaranteed connection.
Taking into account the fact that the regions of Leiria and Coimbra have a strongly industrial vocation, the PS asks for support to “compensate for losses of activity and structural damage, also for self-employed workers and sole proprietors”, providing for this purpose that “refundable financing” will be provided.
In the same sense, it intends to recover “measures to support the maintenance of employment and simplified lay-off adopted during the pandemic”, in addition to proposing to “postpone companies’ tax and contribution obligations” and that the municipal emergency fund has immediate intervention.
In decentralization, the PS advocates the need for an “extraordinary support mechanism for local authorities to replace essential infrastructures” and also the “flexibilization of local authorities’ debt limits”, recalling the importance of “administrative simplification” to mitigate the current state.
It is proposed to extend the Habitar Program to families with severe losses, in order to repair structural damage to homes, also guaranteeing support for social vacancies or in hotel units. The PS advocates that temporary accommodation can be guaranteed with “state co-financing, namely by mobilizing Youth Hostels and INATEL Foundation facilities.”
In addition to multidisciplinary teams for Social Security and Health and a pool of volunteers, there is concern about the “mobilization of reconstruction teams and other support staff”, in addition to calls for “support for access to construction materials.”
In terms of priority for the areas of mobility, the PS demands the “urgent reopening of structural roads, with a provisional solution when necessary” and “the exemption from paying tolls on them”, exemplifying the need to transfer traffic from the A1 to the A8. José Luís Carneiro stresses that it is necessary to “restore public road and rail transport services, in particular long-distance services that remain interrupted between Lisbon and Braga.
Highlighting the urgent need for the “removal of sediments and fallen trees in waterways” and the “regularization of flood beds and immediate restoration of critical channels”, the PS warns of the need for “reforestation with preferably indigenous species resistant to climate extremes” and “intervention in landslide areas and coastal cliffs.”
Predicting and signaling that extreme weather phenomena are a threat, the Socialist Party calls for the creation of “hydrometeorological risk maps based on scenarios until 2050”. For this reason, he argues that it is necessary to have a “permanent financial fund”, with state financing and centralization of humanitarian aid donations, responses to disasters.”
It should be remembered that the Government prolonged the Calamity Situation, activating the National Civil Protection Emergency Plan, something that the PS secretary general and former Minister of Internal Administration had already suggested. This has been one of the areas in which José Luís Carneiro most criticizes the Executive.
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