Filipe Amorim / Lusa
The Minister of Economy and Territorial Cohesion, Manuel Castro Almeida
There is a lot of firewood and a lot of combustible material in the soil, because of the storms. And bureaucracy doesn’t help to clean up.
The Minister of Economy and Territorial Cohesion admitted that removing all the material left behind by storms It is a “huge problem” that depends, in part, on a bureaucratic process, which can delay cleaning.
In an interview with the newspaper, and asked about the lack of greater attention to preventing fires in the PTRR, Manuel Castro Almeida said that the combustible material accumulated in the soil “is a huge problem”, adding that the Minister of Agriculture “is making contracts with municipal councils so that they can lead the process”.
“A generous allocation is registered in the PTRR [Portugal Transformação, Recuperação e Resiliência] to finance collection of this material woody which is in the middle of the forests”, he highlighted.
Castro Almeida also indicated that “contracts with municipal councils have already advanced and the councils have to carry out internal tender processes for this.
“Os competitions are delayed a lot things,” he said.
Home reconstruction
In the interview, Castro Almeida also said that the evaluation and approval of applications for the reconstruction of affected houses are quite late.
“With regard to houses, the situation is different. People who come to ask for support of up to R$10,000 make their request and the administration has to assess whether the request is valid or not, whether the support is due or not. Who should make this assessment? We put it in the law that it will be the city halls. It doesn’t seem to me that there is an alternative to this solution. The city halls are, some more than others, having difficulty processing this work”, he said.
Regarding the sector business, the minister indicated that “more than 1,500 million euros of the credit line that was created and which benefits around 8,000 companies have been approved”
Asked whether the Government is able to reinforce temporarily the number of people in local authorities To speed up the process, Castro Almeida says that Paulo Fernandes, who leads the mission structure [para a reconstrução da região Centro]has coordinated with intermunicipal communities and has already identified hundreds of architects and engineers, through their respective orders, who are available to carry out this work.
“And the city halls contact us and hire us. The State pays. It was this help that was given. On the other hand, there are also city halls that are not covered by the storm zone, which are providing their technicians so the city halls can do this work. The truth is that this work is long overdue”, these.
However, according to the minister, there are very advanced municipalities such as Ourém and Ferreira do Zêzere that have the most advanced work.
“Fresh money”
In the interview with Público, the minister refutes criticism of the PTRR, guaranteeing that “only 4% of resources is money that already exists”, considering “fresh money” all the funds already foreseen, for example coming from European funds, but which have not yet been budgeted”.
When asked whether he rejects the opposition’s accusation in Parliament that this is just another PowerPoint, Castro Almeida said not having heard any criticism of the 96 measures.
“Not one. They did what is always done: when there is no criticism of substance, they criticize the form, they say that it is propagandistic, that it is just a ‘show off’, electoral. They find a cliché to speak badly, because it is not possible to criticize a single measure”, he said.
