With all the drama of Storm Kristin today, the stand made by police unions ASPP/ PSP at Lisbon Airport was completely sidelined.
Designed to be a show of protest to the government – forcing it to resolve “serious problems” faced by police controlling the country’s borders; it ended up being a damp squib. All attentions were elsewhere, and almost certainly will continue to be for the coming days.
Thus the association has settled on Easter for its next ‘stand’ – designed to cause maximum disruption (again) to visiting passengers.
The decision will coincide with the reinstatement of EU border controls – the controls that appeared to cause so many bottlenecks at border checks.
ASPP/PSP president Paulo Santos believes that “Easter is a period that obliges the airport to give more in the way of response” and will allow his members to “prepare themselves for some impact regarding the functioning of their services”.
Unpacking that: Easter will see a lot of visitors, and give border control inspectors full opportunity to air their grievances.
Santos added that ASPP/ PSP will be inviting its professionals to “take all the time necessary to properly check every citizen”.
Today’s action (that took place during one of the peak times for the arrival of international flights) was the third such ‘protest’ organised by ASPP/ PSP – but due to timing (the slow season in terms of visitors), it really did not make ‘the news’.
The problems however are long-standing, and centre on what the association of police syndicates calls the “arrogance and irresponsibility” of airports manager ANA – Aeroportos de Portugal, as well as the ‘whitewashing of the situation’ by the government and PSP national command.
The bottom line is a combination of ANA not opening up additional processing booths over the last decade (in spite of mushrooming passenger numbers), and the government not paying PSP agents processing people arriving and leaving the country in the same way that SEF agents were paid (when they were responsible for the task).
Police are also infuriated by the fact that they are constantly blamed when queues at border controls run into several hours when the real faults lie with airport organisation (or rather, the lack of it).
The message to take away from this situation is that flying into or out of Lisbon airport over Easter may not be plain sailing.
Source material: SIC/ noticiasaominuto
