“Violates local autonomy”, says association
President of the Association of Portuguese Municipalities (ANMP) and mayor of Matosinhos has criticised a government decision to allow Water and Waste Services Regulatory Authority ERSAR to set water tariffs – saying it “violates the autonomy of local power“.
Socialist mayor Luísa Salgueiro complains the amendment “deserves our repudiation, or rather our strong opposition, since it clearly violates the autonomy of local power”.
At the end of a meeting of ANMP’s board of directors in Coimbra today, Salgueiro stressed that it should be municipalities that set tariffs for services provided in their territory.
In her opinion, these tariffs should reflect conditions in each territory.
There has been a degree of to-ing and fro-ing in this regard. First, regulators were responsible for tariffs; then they were given to municipalities, and now what Luísa Salgueiro calls “the step backwards” has come into play.
ANMP has made its strong opinions clear to the government, explaining of the risks of raising tariffs to socially unaffordable levels “above all and in particular in the country’s most economically disadvantaged, most dispersed and least densely populated regions”.
“The solution will be to ensure the economic and financial sustainability of the systems, and this cannot be done just through tariffs”, ANMP continues.
The association’s opinion was requested by the government on August 9, a day after the decree-law defining tariffs, tariff income and other amounts to be charged was approved by the government in its Council of Ministers.
Source: LUSA
