“We have a legislature ahead of us.” This is how the Secretary of State for Public Administrations has finished the only intervention that she has had in the plenary session this morning, when she has responded to the Government’s resistance to updating the salaries of the public function according to the inflation rate forecast by the Executive . With a downward update of almost three percentage points, the inevitable consequence will be the loss of purchasing power of state employees.

Inês Ramires recalled that the State will have an increase in the wage bill of 3.6% this year, she stressed that there will be a “fair and frank negotiation”, but the review of the single table, careers and salary updates are not for now .

The representative of the Government for the Public Administrations in the discussion of the State Budgets in the specialty guaranteed that the Executive “advance with a structured and sustainable perspective” since it still “has a legislature ahead of it”. That is, in the short term there should be no changes in public service salaries. Negotiations with the unions begin in June, Inês Ramires also committed.

“The Government’s commitment remains in the recovery of income, but it will have to be based on various balances, on the need to ensure the future sustainability of the solutions found.”

Earlier, the Social Democrat Duarte Pacheco had already accused the government of “total insensitivity” by increasing the workforce by less than 1% (the increase forecast is 0.9%). “He increases civil servants by less than 1% when he estimates inflation of 4%. If there are more sensitive individuals who decide to increase employees, the Government does not update the IRS levels so that the increase is absorbed by Medina’s coffers and remains in the State,” accused the PSD, who also pointed the finger at the Government. when considering that “it will win with inflation”: “It raises more money than it distributes thanks to inflation”.

A similar reading was made by the Bloco de Esquerda: “The Government has more income, it is revising the deficit downwards, but it is imposing a policy of impoverishing the country.” It was up to the deputy Mariana Mortágua to point the finger at the Government of Costa, to whom she said that there were no “excuses or inevitability”: “The Government opts for a Budget that impoverishes the country.”

The BE again accused the Government of “surrendering to the rise in inflation” and the PCP took the opportunity to underline once again that the proposals it had made in October when the 2022 Budget failed are more valid than ever. “If at the end of last year the PCP solutions were necessary, today, with the worsening of living conditions, they become even more urgent. If the government wants to respond to the problems, then the path is the one presented by the PCP”, said parliamentary leader Paula Santos.

Full dedication of doctors in the SNS. Government presents figures: 87.4% of Portuguese have a family doctor

With Covid-19 making clear the weaknesses of the National Health Service, this Monday some promises of change in this area were also on the table. With the Secretary of State for Health Lacerda Sales taking the opportunity to leave some numbers.

After António Costa twice failed to fulfill his promise to be able to extend family doctor coverage to the entire population and had already abandoned it, Lacerda Sales says that the On April 30 there was “87.4% subscriber coverage” in health centers.

Compared to the doctors in this specialty who practiced in 2015, Sales says that there is “a net balance of 734 general and family doctors” in the face of an increase of “about 500,000 people enrolled in health centers.”

But the Secretary of State does not deny the need to reinforce the coverage of these clinicians for the Portuguese and has committed the Government to the “rehabilitation of general and family medicine” -which in the last contest of 235 open places only occupied 160 places – in the first phase, according to data from the Executive – and create “performance incentives” for these health professionals.

Regarding the full dedication of doctors, requested in the Chamber by the former partners of Artilugio, Lacerda Sales stressed that it will be a process to be defined in the new SNS Statute that is approved.