The president of the Liberal Initiative (IL) accused successive governments this Sunday of “playing with the people” in the Viseu region, due to the lack of the train and the IP3, because there are funds, there is no political will.
“When it is assumed by everyone, including the Minister of Public Works, as a priority and if a priority does not pass in two, four, six, eight years, then they are really playing with the people”, accused João. Cotrim Figueiredo.
The leader of IL spoke with journalists, moments before getting on the tourist train in Viseu, about mobility issues, more specifically the lack of a railway line in the city where this Sunday marks the second day of another Liberal Route.
“It must be said that, as is the case with the IP3 reclassification, these works, which are of enormous importance for the Viseu district, and for the interior in general, cannot remain on paper any longer”, he added. .
The deputy also recalled that he has been in Parliament for three years and since then he sees, in the State Budgets, “always funds allocated to railways, specifically to this connection” that “is registered in the PRR [Plano de Recuperação e Resiliência]but nothing advances and it is inconceivable”.
“It is very difficult to understand, because the funds (…) are registered, so it is certainly not a lack of funds. The political priority is also there, word of mouth says that they are very important works and that they have to go ahead and then there is no capacity to carry them out or effective political will, not only the proclaimed one, but the real one, to advance these works,” he stressed.
In this sense, he considered “especially shocking when, at the same time, much more burdensome things for the budget were decided, such as the intervention in TAP, which paid for two, or three, or four of these railway connections.” .
Based on the example of the air carrier, he affirmed that “it does not make sense that problems that are not the responsibility of the State to solve, are solved quickly and with an enormous expenditure of public money for the benefit of the populations of the coast, in this case of TAP, which does not serve as populations inland”.
“And when it comes to building a railway, which is strategic for the country and for the development of Viseu, nothing happens, so it is incomprehensible and shows that the functioning of the State machine, many times, does not have as The main priority is the interest of the populations”, he defended.
João Cotrim Figueiredo said that “Viseu is the largest city in Europe that is not served by rail, when it could well be a connection point between the ports of Matosinhos and Aveiro and Spain and from there to Europe”.
This official defended that the railway would serve not only the people but also “the industry, which in this strip of territory is so needy” and, in this sense, said that “it is not understood, especially when all the mayors of the region recognize that this would be an enormous added value for the economic development” of the interior.
Source: Observadora
