By: CECÍLIA PIRES
POLICE AND immigration agents carried out a massive operation on Tuesday morning aimed at identifying illegal immigrants working in the Silves area.
With numerous GNR vans parked at the Alcantarilha roundabout, more than fifty GNR agents and immigration and borders control authority agents, Serviço de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras (SEF), carried out paperwork checks by stopping the mid-morning traffic.
Other officers were ready inside the vans to take people who did not appear to have the correct documents to the nearest police station for further investigation.
Not far from the roundabout another checkpoint was set up by GNR and SEF agents to inspect vehicles that were using a dirt track.
The track had a sign pointing to the Amendoeira Golf Resort and The Resident understands that the track leads to the area where most of the contractors working for Oceânico Group at the Amendoeira Golf accommodate their workers.
A spokesman from the Silves GNR branch told The Resident that both operations were “pure routine inspections” to look for illegal workers and immigrants in the area.
Martin Date, general manager of the Amendoeira Golf Resort for the Oceânico Group, told The Resident he was “not aware that anyone related with the Amendoeira construction had been detained”.
He said the company had “knowledge of the operation” and that Oceânico “supports any activity aiming to control any illegalities in the labour market”.
The Oceânico Group employs a third party company, P3 – Projectos de Engenharia, Lda to look after the contractors’ legality and the safety issues.
João Estevão, a P3 engineer, told The Resident that “all workers were at the construction site this morning”, although they were late.
“We have regular controls inside the development, through retina scans and workers random counting,” he added.
Portimão GNR Major Vitor Calado said that several individuals had been detained following the operation in Alcantarilha.
He said it had involved 45 police agents and resulted in the arrest of four people that had been previously ordered to leave the country.
From a total of 372 people whose papers were inspected, 21 more were notified to leave Portugal voluntarily immediately, five others told to attend the SEF office for further inspection and one notified for expulsion, as he already had been ordered for extradition.
At the time The Resident went to press on Wednesday, a similar operation was being carried out at the Forum Algarve roundabout in Faro.
Armed PSP and SEF agents were stopping all vehicles transporting groups of people.
Do you have a view on this story? Email: editor@the-resident.com
