MPs on the parliamentary committee for Constitutional Matters have unanimously approved “an urgent hearing” of both the Minister of Interior Administration, and the Secretary of State for Civil Protection, over the government’s response to Storm Kristin, and the failings (yet again) of state communications network, SIRESP.
The requests for these hearings were made by both CHEGA and IL (Iniciativa Liberal); CHEGA being the party that wants to hear from the Secretary of State for Civil Protection, Rui Rocha, as well as minister Maria Lúcia de Amaral.
CHEGA also proposed inviting the mayors of Coimbra and Leiria to the hearings, so that they could recount the difficulties felt on the ground – but this suggestion was vetoed, with votes against by the two parties in government (PSD/CDS-PP) and abstention by PS Socialists.
During the discussions, IL MP Marta Ferreira Silva brought up the situation of SIRESP, recalling that it (most recently) failed during the ‘Iberian Blackout’ last year, at which point a working group was created by the government to find an “urgent substitution” for the system – and yet here we are almost a year later with nothing presented, far less decided ….
The meeting then meandered into the persistent failings of SIRESP (which relies on telecoms operators/ the electrical grid) and how its substitution would necessarily be expensive.
Tackled on SIRESP’s latest failings when he was visiting a factory in Pombal on Tuesday, the prime minister’s retort was that “we are concentrated on resolving problems, we are not concentrated on responding to criticisms.”
It may be, however, that this is exactly what the Minister of Interior Administration (and her secretary of state) will be expected to do when they face the committee (date not revealed).
Source material: LUSA
