The secretary general of the PCP said this Saturday that the Government “acted late and announced a lot” in responding to people affected by the storms, and that so far no financial support has reached those in need.
Paulo Raimundo was speaking to the Lusa agency during a visit to a neighborhood in Almada, Olho de Boi (near Cacilhas), in the district of Setúbal, which was isolated due to a road collapse, with the only alternative being to climb 210 steps up the cliff, from the riverside area to the historic center of the city.
“The experience we have are two, I would say. The first experience is that the Government acted late and announced a lot, but what we know, so far, are two things: There has not been any financial support reaching people yet and there are people who are still paying the loans resulting from the financial aid from Storm Leslie (in September 2018)”, he said.
The communist leader said that also in the case of the fires that devastated Portugal in the summer, “more than half of the people who applied for support still don’t know if they will receive anything”.
“We don’t need propaganda, nor chests full of advertisements. We need measures. I would prefer that there were no advertisements, but that there were measures on the ground. Unfortunately, we are the opposite, we have many announcements, but few measures on the ground”, he maintained.
Paulo Raimundo said that it was for this reason that the PCP proposed a special debate in the Assembly of the Republic on the impact of the storms, which was rejected.
“It was not to assess the storm, but to find out how it affected the concrete. Beyond the announcements, beyond the propaganda, what is happening on the ground. That’s what worries me and that’s what we wanted to see discussed”, he highlighted, adding that the PCP has proposals that it would like to also contribute to this operation.
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