PS leader José Luís Carneiro has challenged the prime minister over his announcement yesterday about the purchase of 275 new ambulances – “the largest investment of its kind in the last decade”.
Did Luís Montenegro know that the tender for these ambulances was decided by the last PS Socialist government? If he did, then he lied to parliament and should apologise.
If he did not know, then he was misled by his own services.
Whatever the case, someone owes parliament (and the wider country) an apology.
Using a strange analogy considering current times, Mr Carneiro said that “in the United States of America” lying to parliament “would lead to the impeachment of the president” which is “unacceptable in a qualified democracy”.
The Socialist leader stressed that the 275 new vehicles announced by Luís Montenegro – coincidentally at a point where the lack of ambulances in the country was seen as contributing to three deaths – were the result of a resolution by the Council of Ministers on November 29, 2023 (shortly after the then prime minister António Costa had resigned, paving the way for the dissolution of parliament and new elections).
“Then, the current government reviewed this decision on August 29, 2024,” recalls Mr Carneiro.
“The question that needs to be asked is: why is it only now, after so long, that the tender for emergency ambulances is being announced?”
Compounding the situation that smells distinctly fishy, Mr Carneiro says that he has also been given information that “there was a decision to mobilise emergency medical technicians to the rescue operations centres, to the CODU – which meant taking emergency medical technicians away from ambulances.
“I also have information that we have about 16 ambulances in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, and only five are operating.
“These are clarifications that must be given to the country,” said José Luís Carneiro, insisting that the “prime minister cannot be silent on a matter that has to do with people’s dignity and lives.
“I hope the prime minister will clarify (all) this. It may be that the services provided him with inaccurate information.
“But, if the prime minister was aware that the tender for the ambulances was actually a decision of the cabinet in November 2023, and we are now in January 2026 – and he did not have the courage to tell parliament that it was not a decision of his government – then he must offer a clear apology to the Portuguese people.”
Certainly, yesterday’s ‘announcement’ as the media reverberated with incidents of people left waiting for ambulances until they died, seemed ‘almost too convenient’.
Presidential candidate Henrique Gouveia e Melo went so far as to call it ‘strange’…
The next question may be, if it has taken the AD government this long to announce an acquisition decided in 2023, how many other tenders decided by the last government are still in the works and potentially being saved for future inconvenient moments?
SIC Notícias, meantime, has discovered that the Socialist government’s resolution of November 29, 2023 actually envisioned acquiring a lot more than 275 new ambulances: the text of the resolution, published in state gazette Diário da República two weeks later, described the “significant wear and tear” evident in the nation’s fleet of ambulances, related to its constant use in very demanding conditions, as well as to the age of many vehicles”, a situation that “causes operational constraints and increased public expenditure, since many of the vehicles require frequent and costly repairs and maintenance”.
The expenditure of more than €19 million was authorised for the acquisition of 312 vehicles of different types, with an estimated cost not exceeding €6 million in each of the years between 2023 and 2026.
“Almost a year later, on August 30, 2024 with Montenegro already in the role of prime minister since April of that year, a reprogramming of the acquisition was published in Diário da República.
Given the “time required for the tender procedure, receipt and conversion of the vehicles”, the document concluded that it was not “possible to incur expenditure within the 2024 financial year, and that this is only expected to occur in the 2025 financial year”, writes SIC.
And yet the government didn’t move on the vehicles until the week in which three people died waiting for ambulances in the space of little more than 24-hours.
Source: LUSA/ SIC Notícias
