The President of the Republic defended this Monday the need for Portugal to advance in achieving the objectives of the National Strategy to Fight Poverty 2021-2030 with “new models of action” to face the problem and recalled that “almost two million of Portuguese are poor..”
In a message posted on the Presidency’s website in Interneton the occasion of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa calls for “will and ambition” to combat this reality “that persists” in Portuguese society.
Talking about fighting poverty and inequalities in Portugal is, above all, talking about an aging society, where older people are at greater risk of poverty and social exclusion. To speak of the fight against poverty and inequalities in Portugal is to speak of a society where the structural causes of poverty have crystallized for years, if not decades, and are passed on from generation to generation”, recalls the Head of State.
Talking about combating poverty is also, according to the President of the Republic, “talking about that ballast that affects our present, and that will have consequences for our future, because it affects our children”, but also accepting this reality and looking straight ahead. pointing out ways to solve it. “Roads that pose this challenge, and above all the challenge of fight against child poverty and among the elderly, as a national goal”, he adds.
Marcelo considers that the path “already began with the publication, at the end of last year, of the National Strategy to Combat Poverty 2021-2030, with measurable objectives, such as lifting 660,000 people out of poverty and reducing poverty by half. the poverty rate. among children and among workers.
“It is imperative, and events such as the one highlighted today, serve to underline this fact, the achievement of these objectives, with a different approach to poverty, seen as a challenge that we all have to share, adopting new models of action, capable of facing the new forms of poverty that invade the world and will decisively mark the coming decades“, concludes the head of state.
The International Day for the Eradication of Poverty was also marked by Unicef Portugal, the organization took the opportunity to point out that this is a reality that “is already affecting children and young people” in the country.
Source: Observadora
