Science, Technology and Higher Education Minister Elvira Fortunato assured on Tuesday that there will be an additional 15,000 beds for students by the end of 2026, thanks to funding from the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR).
“We are currently building, within the scope of the PRR, another 15,000 beds, equivalent to at least another 86 new homes, and we hope to complete this entire process by the end of 2026,” he told journalists at the end of a meeting. visit of the works for the future student residence in Lamego, in the Viseu district.
The minister underlined that this is only possible thanks to funding from the PRR, which made it possible to set up a “national plan that goes from Minho to the Algarve, including the islands”.
“We are building houses all over the country and, as is the case here, we are even using empty buildings,” in parts of the city with “less movement,” he added.
Developed within the framework of the National Housing Plan for Higher Education and financed by the PRR for an amount of 1.5 million euros (to which 284 thousand euros must be added from the municipality), the future residence for students in Lamego will provide 46 beds in available for student scholarships, from academic year 2024/2025.
This target of more than 15,000 beds for higher education students by 2026 had already been announced by the Prime Minister in September last year, when he stated that he had guaranteed the funding of the PRR for 15,800 beds. On that occasion, it undertook to realize 26,000 new beds for higher education students that year.
At the time, the government announced that there were 119 student housing projects with guaranteed funding, covering 51 municipalities. Of these, 23 buildings would have been built from the ground up, for a total of 9,356 new beds.
António Costa spoke at the Academia das Ciências in Lisbon, concluding a session for the signing of 119 higher education student residence projects, attended by Elvira Fortunato and Mariana Vieira da Silva, respectively Ministers of Higher Education and of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers.
Source: DN
