“They should have left a long time ago”
President of the Portugal’s Firefighters’ League (LBP) António Nunes has called today for the resignation of Civil Protection bosses, due to their “manifest inability to organise the system”.
Talking to MPs on the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, Rights, Freedoms and Guarantees, he said those in charge at ANEPC, the National Emergency and Civil Protection Authority, “should have left a long time ago”.
“The abandonment and lack of coherence of the ANEPC, and also of the National Directorate of Firefighters, leaves us with the conviction that those in charge should have left their posts a long time ago, due to their clear inability to establish partnerships and create integration processes with a view to providing the Portuguese with a better organised, more resilient and capable system,” he said.
At yet another hearing requested by right-wing party CHEGA, António Nunes said that ANEPC “has not adequately protected firefighters”.
The hearing was called ostensibly to hear ‘expectations and difficulties of volunteer firefighters associations with the start of the fire season’.
For António Nunes, ANEPC is going “in the opposite direction to what the organic law determines“, the most recent example being “non-payment at the end of June” of permanent funding to firefighting associations in the amounts approved in the State Budget for this year.
“The proposals put forward by the ANEPC for firefighters within the scope of the forest firefighting system are unacceptable, both from the point of view of the financial directive and from the point of view of operations, administration and logistics,” said Nunes, calling on parliament and the government to “stop the attempts at hegemonic domination by ANEPC and AGIF” (Agency for the Integrated Management of Rural Fires), which he warned, are seeking to implement “a doctrine for fighting forest fires that is inadequate and dangerous for the safety of the population and their property”.
Nunes emphasised that “in the short and/or medium term, firefighters may not have the necessary availability for a robust response to forest fires and other risks and vulnerabilities, which have been powered by climate change”.
Source material: LUSA
