The coordinator of the Bloco de Esquerda (BE), Catarina Martins, said this Saturday that the measures announced by the government to reduce inflation come “too late”, when people are “already desperate” and regret that they are not for everyone.
“We learned several things. First, that there has always been budgetary capacity to do much more for wages and support for families in Portugal and that the government stopped doing more because it didn’t want to. And that’s why today we have more people in a vulnerable situation than we had. We have three million people in a vulnerable situation,” stressed Catarina Martins.
The BE coordinator also added that the executive headed by António Costa, “because he refused to act for so long”, meant that “even those employees whom the government says will eventually do a small salary increase” have already lost a month’s salary due to the current inflation.
“In other words, the government comes late, very late, when the people are very desperate,” said Catarina Martins, addressing journalists at the Mercado dos Lavradores, in Funchal, in the context of a political initiative attended by the head of of the BE list for the next regional elections, Roberto Almada.
The blockade leader pointed out that “there are people who, with very difficult lives, are completely excluded from the support that is now being announced”.
“What needs to be done is to raise wages, yes, but raise wages in line with inflation so that people don’t lose purchasing power permanently. And not just for some, policies are needed to reverse this rise in wages and pensions. realize,” he defended.
“Pensioners were absolutely forgotten in all this and lose a lot,” he stressed.
Catarina Martins also underlined the need to control the prices of essential goods.
“The government is hopeful that reducing VAT on a package of products, which we still don’t know what it is, will solve the problem, but as the government itself has recently acknowledged, reducing VAT without price controls makes that large distribution can factor this into the prices, that is, we make taxpayers give more profit to large distribution and large distribution has made millions in profits,” he claimed.
Asked about the next regional parliamentary elections, which have not yet been scheduled by the President of the Republic, but will take place between September and October, the blocking coordinator believed that “the BE is sorely missed in the Legislative Assembly of Madeira” and praised it party work in the region.
Source: DN
