The Minister of Internal Administration blames the SEF for a new situation of chaos at the Lisbon airport, like the one that occurred last Sunday, and says that the repetition will lead to the dismissal of those responsible. In an interview with the newspaper Público, José Luís Carneiro said that the accumulation of passengers at the airport in queues with long waiting times was due to a “failure” of the Immigration and Border Service at the airport that cannot be repeated and also guarantees that the plan The government’s contingency plan will be implemented until July 4.
The first phase of the plan contemplates the reinforcement of SEF resources at the airport, with elements from the PSP, SEF inspectors and also through the “mobilization of human resources from the SEF, from other organic units”. The reinforcement, Carneiro supposes, was advanced between 8 and 15 days, by decision of the Government to avoid more chaos at the airport in the country’s capital. That day, the minister says that what failed was “the team that was at the airport of the national directorate” and that he did not provide information on the need to mobilize the contingency plan that the minister claims to have prepared.
“We had two national deputy directors, another was appointed on Wednesday, who is exclusively dedicated to what is being developed at national airports and very particularly at Lisbon airport, and whose main mission is to supervise the implementation of the contingency plan”, he added. he explained to Public. “Failure of this nature cannot be repeated. A failure of this nature has to lead to the immediate replacement of whoever has this responsibility at the airport,” said the minister, realizing that he had already told the National Directorate of the SEF.
Despite assuming the “failure”, the minister also assures that, at the moment, Europe already has “a peak in demand that, at certain times, already exceeds the peaks in demand in 2019” and that the pandemic also brought “a dispensation of personnel” who must have “specific skills” that José Luís Carneiro considers difficult to find. And it’s hard to hire them. In the case of the Lisbon airport, what we can say is that there is a greater demand for SEF here today. In addition, the socialist minister assures that on that specific day “false documents and statements that had no legal validity were detected”, which led the SEF agents to have to abandon some of the 16 service mailboxes.
The socialist minister is asked about the need to carry out the new Lisbon airport, a decades-long debate that, according to José Luís Carneiro, has been “a priority of the Government since the first legislature”. In this chapter, the Socialist repeats what the President of the Government said on the subject, referring to the need for “a broad social consensus”, blaming Rui Rio for not having advanced in the location of the new airport in Montijo. “He did not show willingness to support the solution,” says Carneiro, who is waiting for a conversation in July between the Prime Minister and the new leader of the PSD, Luís Montenegro. According to the Minister of Infrastructure, on the understanding that if the country had “an airport infrastructure with another potential, today it would be taking advantage of opportunities to attract tourists to the country that, due to the impossibility of the airport, are not being taken advantage of.” correctly used.”
Source: Observadora
