With criticism over the government’s handling of the last two weeks of ‘climate emergency’, Correio da Manhã today reports that families and businesses with tax and/ or social security debts are being excluded from financial support announced following Storm Kristin.
The paper is not talking ‘massive debts’, either: it is enough to have an outstanding payment for vehicle road fund tax not to qualify for state help to recover one’s home/ business/ property.
The government’s mantra that “no-one will be left behind” is beginning to look as flimsy as the promise that workers on ‘simplified lay-off’ would receive 100% of their salaries (something that has since appeared to be untrue).
Also excluded from the much-trumpeted €2.5 billion package of support measures are landlords with legal rental contracts, the self-employed, cooperatives and associations of agricultural producers and forestry management businesses, says CM.
“All it needs is to owe IUC for a vehicle (road fund tax) or motorways tolls, for people applying to be without access to public support.”
The government established these impediments in the two decree-laws that came out of the Council of Ministers meeting on February 9, the paper continues.
“In annex II, no. 2 a) the government leaves it clear that people with their own home, permanent or through a formalised rental contract, should have their tax status regularised, under the terms of article 177º-A of the Code of Tributary Procedures (CPT). This criteria is reaffirmed in article 5º, no. 2 a), of the regulatory ordinance, establishing that these beneficiaries must present at the moment of presenting their candidature (for state support) “a regularised tax situation, certified in good faith”.
As a result of this latest ‘snag’ in a process that was meant to be ‘so simple/ quick and there to help people by February 9’, Paula Franco of the country’s Order of Accountants recommends that anyone applying for support check their tax/ social security situation quickly. She told CM that the problems are most likely to apply to businesses – many of which have already put in for ‘credit lines’.
But these little ‘kinks’ in the narrative that ‘no-one will be left behind’ when it comes to rebuilding from this national catastrophe have somehow fed into the growing ‘discontent’ over the way the government has been seen to be handling it – and in the way the government has been handling other crises (health particularly).
Commentators are agreed that there have been some catastrophic choices for ministers – and it is time for the prime minister to accept this and remodel his executive.
For now, at least, this line of criticism is being delayed by the urgency of the situation in places like Coimbra.
The bi-monthly parliamentary debate – in which opposition parties are expected to ‘let rip’ over their opinions of the government’s handling of this crisis – has been delayed until the worst of the weather emergency is over.
Source material: Correio da Manhã
