Companies will have to guarantee contracts/ accommodation and training
The government wants to make it easier for immigrants to enter Portugal to complete the work under the PRR (Brussels’ funded Plan for Recovery and Resilience).
In spite of numbers already here, around 80,000 immigrants are needed to complete the work, reports SIC Notícias.
“Since June, the government has been analysing the creation of a mechanism to allow immigrants to enter the country to work in the construction sector. Companies will have to guarantee a labour contract, residency and training”, says the station.
SIC cites an article by Jornal de Notícias which says the whole focus of the government right now is to “find more workers to complete the work under the PRR”.
Opposition parties are, some of them, on board. For example, IL (Inicitiativa Liberal) maintains: “If people enter with a work contract, with a work visa, if public entities have the administrative capacity to fit these people in and if they have their income, we can’t hold the country back any longer”.
The Association of Civil Construction and Public Works Industrialists adds that in the last five years the construction sector has gained 89,000 workers, thanks almost entirely to immigration.
But more than 80,000 are still needed to respond to works that need to be done within the PRR’s strict deadlines.
The PCP communist party, however, thinks this kind of targeted hiring glosses over immigrants’ “rights”.
“Workers are needed in our country. And it’s not for project A, B or C…”, says party leader Paulo Raimundo
“What we need to do is respond to the country’s needs, valuing those who work and those who are here in our country, those who live and work here, regardless of their origin, should have the same rights and should have the same duties. And they should be working legally today on the TGV construction site and tomorrow if they want to work in a restaurant or be a singer, or whatever. This thing of going out and getting jobs ‘based on’… we’ve seen that movie before,” he said.
Raimundo appears to see Portugal as a country that lives in two realities: “the reality of propaganda and the reality of life”.
“What I’m not yet convinced of is whether some who live in the reality of propaganda do so because they truly believe in it or because they want to divert attention. And we don’t need propaganda, what we need is to solve people’s problems, people’s real lives,” he stressed.
Sources: SIC Notícias/ Lusa
