Portugal’s Bloco de Esquerda (BE) party has presented two draft resolutions in Parliament urging the government to support the victims of August’s wildfires in Monchique, Silves, Portimão and Odemira.
In one of them, it demands that the government support the victims of this year’s wildfires in the same way that it did the victims of wildfires in Pedrogão Grande and other areas of Portugal. In the second, it calls for the creation of a simplified procedure to support the victims of the fires.
Two months after the devastating fires that destroyed 27,000 hectares of forest in the Algarve and Alentejo, there is still a lot to be done to help the people affected.
Says BE, it is “unacceptable that people and companies have not yet received the necessary support and aid from the central administration”.
In fact, the left-wingers say that the situation would be “much more devastating and the difficulties much more serious” were it not for the action and support from volunteers, families, associations, the local council and other entities.
The party says there have been many issues regarding how victims can apply for support, namely the “lack of official, centralised information with clear and transparent criteria, accessible to all”.
As BE explains, applications for the PDR 2020 programme become “a long and bureaucratic process” which leads many people to give up.
“Many of the victims of the fires are unmotivated and in despair,” the party says.
Making matters worse is the fact that there are people and companies affected by fires that are not covered by government support programmes.
Thus, the party says it is “essential to support, urgently and through a simplified procedure, all the victims affected by the August fires in the boroughs that were affected, to rebuild their houses, to replace their equipment and to restore the productive potential of these areas.”
michael.bruxo@algarveresident.com
Photo: Bruno Pires/Open Media
