The prime minister said on Tuesday that the president of the republic “has already been kind enough” to respond to the letter he sent him saying a mechanism to ensure transparency in the appointment of members of the government.
“The President of the Republic has already been kind enough to answer me and we are working on it,” said António Costa in Benavente, after presenting a project funded by the Recovery and Resilience Program (PRR), for the production of green hydrogen , under the Sines Green Hydrogen Valley consortium.
On Thursday evening, the prime minister sent a letter to the president of the republic suggesting the establishment of a verification mechanism in the appointment of government officials, an idea he had already discussed in parliament the day before.
On that occasion, Costa stressed that he would first speak to Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and then announce what he would propose “so that the circuit can be improved, because it can be improved”.
“I don’t think we can and should normalize abnormal situations, even if they are cases and anecdotes. They should be taken seriously and, above all, we should trust that we take them seriously”said.
As late as Thursday afternoon, the president of the republic defended that any system of vetting potential candidates for government positions should be implemented before the government proposes the leaders, not after.
“If there is any intervention, and we’ll see who, how, to identify legality issues, constitutionality issues, or impediment issues with regard to who gets appointed to certain positions, like the one you talked about, I think it should be before the government submits the proposal [ao Presidente da República]’ said the then head of state.
Costa says it is “absolutely untrue” that municipalities are starting to hire teachers
The Prime Minister in Benavente is still “absolutely untrue” that municipalities will start hiring teachers and that the list of qualifications will not be fulfilled when hiring.
At the end of the presentation of the green hydrogen production project faced with a demonstration of fifty teachers, António Costa said that the government will continue to negotiate with the unions, recalling that the Ministry of Education has scheduled for the 18th meetings for the third round of negotiations.
For the head of government, the teachers’ protests are the result of “many misconceptions”, perhaps of a communication that “has not been entirely direct” and of “a lot of misinformation through the WhatsApp network, saying that the mayors to hire, which is absolutely a lie”.
António Costa added to the reasons for the dispute the accumulation, “over many years, of a great number of reasons for dissatisfaction”.
“There is no council. This is total confusion. It is absolutely false. I admit it came from the confusion of the fact that we are negotiating the decentralization process and the teacher hiring model, but they are completely different models” , he stated. .
According to the Prime Minister, the government is decentralizing to the municipal authorities the possibility of doing in the 2nd and 3rd cycle and in secondary “what they are already doing in the 1st cycle and in pre-school education, which has to do with , namely with the management of facilities and non-teaching staff”.
“As for the teaching staff, there is no authority to transfer to the rooms. This is a total lie,” he added.
On the other hand, the Prime Minister assured that the competitions will always be based on the national graduation list, giving the “opportunity” to school groups to hire teachers to fill vacant rosters.
“To make these hires easier, we’ve made them more flexible,” he said, giving the example of the possibility of the same person teaching full-time in different schools.
For António Costa, it is essential to change a competitive model that sees teachers “walking with the house on their backs for years and years” until they bond, allowing them to leave only “if and when they want to leave, and not be forced to leave “the leave”.
A group of teachers gathered outside Fusion Fuel, in the Zona Industrital Vale Tripeiro, in Benavente, where they held up posters and chanted slogans such as “Costa, listen, teachers fight”, “Respect!”, “public school” or “Struggling teachers are also teaching”.
Costa emphasizes the role of mobilizing agendas
The Prime Minister said the 51 mobilization agendas already approved are one of the fundamental components of the Recovery and Resilience Program (PRR), which involves €2,900 million in capitalization and business innovation.
Costa stated that the set of mobilizing agendas will allow the creation of 18,000 jobs and that the innovative products or services expected to be created are “worth €8.7 billion, i.e. almost four times more than the investment expected to be done”. supported by the PRR”.
“This necessarily means that our gross domestic product (GDP) will increase,” he declared during the first week-long visit that will be devoted to signing or visiting projects implementing the mobilization agenda, within the framework of the “Roteiro PRR” which started last week to verify ongoing projects throughout the national territory.
The PRR includes more than €18 billion between grants and loans through 2026, with Costa stating that the mobilization agendas are probably the “most challenging, most innovative” program, by allowing “added value” to what is in the land is produced, essential for a significant increase in GDP.
According to him, the 51 mobilizing agendas involve 1228 entities, of which 900 are companies, 114 are entities from the scientific and technological system, in addition to public administration entities or others that do not fund.
Referring to the project he visited today, António Costa said it is part of the National Hydrogen Strategy, recalling that when he announced it he was “hypercritical”.
“We did it on time. Since February 24, 2022 [data da invasão da Ucrânia pela Rússia] no one is in any doubt that Europe has the utmost urgency to replace the natural gas it consumes with green hydrogen,” he said, emphasizing that Portugal has conditions and natural resources that it never had “in the other energy revolutions”, making it particularly competitive in global hydrogen production.
The consortium developing the project brings together components produced in the country, which are the result of research and national patents, intended to serve the national industry and exports, he stressed.
The Fusion Fuel unit in Benavente is intended to increase the production capacity of electrolysers, currently centered in Sabugo, in Almargem do Bispo (Sintra), from the current 20 megawatts per year to 500 by 2025, with an increase in the employment of the current 156 to about 350.
The project is part of the mobilizing agendas component of the PRR, involving the Sines Green Hydrogen Valley, a total investment of 122 million euros, of which 8.7 million is for research, innovation and development, with an incentive of 36 million euros.
Source: DN
