The general secretary of the PCP, Paulo Raimundo, said today that the situation currently being experienced at the National Institute of Medical Emergency (INEM) has “unmasked” the problems in health, in helping populations and the lack of professionals.
“With regard to health, aid, the lack of resources, the lack of professionals, the king goes naked and this is the big problem that the INEM situation has unmasked in these days with a dramatic problem of lack of resources, of lack of conditions to provide assistance to all those who need it”, said Paulo Raimundo.
The communist leader was speaking in Sines, in the district of Setúbal, during the Regional Lunch with close to a hundred party activists and supporters, as part of the campaign “Increase salaries and pensions, for a better life”.
For Paulo Raimundo, despite the situation the country is facing, the Government continues to be “extraordinarily effective in transforming” the current problems into a “business opportunity for the private sector”.
“Before the king, what does the Government do naked? Propaganda, announcements, pushes with its belly forward and even worse, as we have always said regarding all the issues that arise” it is “extraordinarily effective in transforming each person of the problems we live with in a great business opportunity for the private sector”, he criticized.
For the general secretary of the PCP, “the king is naked in health, the king is naked in education, the king is naked in the security forces, the king is naked in justice, but also in the Armed Forces”.
“There is a lack of doctors, a lack of nurses, a lack of INEM technicians, a lack of teachers and a lack of assistants, a lack of personnel in the security forces, a lack of employees in the courts, a lack of workers in many other public services, a lack of schools, police stations, hospitals, roads, transport, there is a lack of houses that the majority can afford, there is a lack of homes, there is a lack of daycare centers. And, with so much that is missing, the Government’s greatest satisfaction is having budget surpluses”, he stated.
Regarding pensions, Paulo Raimundo reiterated that the party is not “against specific support for retirees”, considering that this is yet another measure that does not solve “the underlying problems”.
“The problem is that the bills for every day, every month, water, electricity, medicines, food, housing, rent, all of this cannot be paid when the specific support eventually arrives. This is paid every month and the only way to guarantee an increase in the living conditions of retirees is not by giving one-off support in the middle of the year”, but by “increasing pensions significantly for those who have worked their entire lives”, he argued.
At the regional meeting, the communist leader also criticized the profits of banks and large companies such as Galp and insisted that the State Budget “is another piece at the service of economic groups”.
Regarding the reduction in the 1% IRC rate, Paulo Raimundo said that “it is intended for companies with higher profits”.
“It is for large companies that the 1% reduction in IRPJ is intended, under the falsehood that we have the highest rates”, he accused.
Source: rr.sapo.pt
