During a visit to the Food Bank Against Hunger in Lisbon, the head of state highlighted that this is a structural problem that has been going on for more than 50 years, aggravated by international crises, pandemics and population aging, being partially mitigated by young immigration that contributes to the birth rate.
The President of the Republic admitted this Saturday that he felt frustrated that poverty numbers in Portugal had not decreased, being above two million people, a fight that he defended, as he recalled, throughout his mandates.
Asked if he didn’t feel frustrated by the country’s poverty figures, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa was clear: “Ah, yes, I feel frustrated.”
In the same statements, he recalled that the issue of poverty in Portugal has lasted for more than 50 years and that he had witnessed the efforts of various governments over the decades, “who did what they could, tried to do what they could”.
And he listed some of the factors that contributed to this scenario: international crises, health situations such as the Covid-19 pandemic or the aging of Portuguese society itself.
“Portuguese society and European societies are aging very quickly and aging means impoverishment, and it also means difficulty” after turning around, he said.
“And we turned around, largely, as you know, due to immigration, but we only turned around a part”, he highlighted, noting that it was not completely reversed.
And he continued: “I don’t know if you’ve seen the numbers lately (…) of births in hospital units in Portugal, where the number of births among the immigrant population has risen rapidly, for a very simple reason: they are younger, they are more numerous and they are, in this way, partially coping with the situation of the Portuguese population”.
At the beginning of his statements to journalists, at the end of the visit, the head of State thanked the Federation of Food Banks, as President of the Republic, for the “many, many, many years of service to the country”.
“And if there is sadness in my heart, it is because poverty has not reduced what it should have reduced”, he highlighted.
Two million Portuguese “is a lot of Portuguese and of these two million there are almost 400 thousand who receive support from Food Banks, meaning that it is a fifth” of that total, he stated.
In turn, he is happy to see “more volunteers, younger people”, he added.
On October 17, the European Anti-Poverty Network (EAPN) Portugal warned of the persistent number of people at risk of poverty, above two million, which demonstrates that this phenomenon continues to be a structural problem in the country.
The Food Bank Against Hunger food collection campaign involves the participation of more than 42 thousand volunteers in 2,000 stores across the country, in an invitation to share non-perishable food with those who need it most.
