The PCP/Madeira defended this Sunday the beginning of a process of creating new parishes in the archipelago, to “adapt the administrative division of the territory of the autonomous community to reality.”
the CDU [coligação PCP/PEV] considers that this is the right time to restart the processes of creating new parishes”, said the sole deputy of the PCP in the Legislative Assembly of Madeira, in a contact action with the population of Álamos, in Funchal, one of the towns that , in his opinion, should be elevated to a parish.
Ricardo Lume argued that a regional strategy promoted by the Government of Madeira and including the Municipal Councils, Parish Councils and civil society is “fundamental”, to define “an administrative management of the territory appropriate to the reality of the 21st century and not an administration of division inherited from the 19th century”.
Referring to the town he visited, the communist stressed that “with the passage of time, the population of Álamos affirmed that this town would become a parish, mainly from the mid-20th century, due to the development that took place in this site of the municipality of Funchal. which is divided between the parish of Santo António and the parish of São Roque”.
The Madeiran parliamentarian stressed that, like Álamos, “the development that the different localities have known over time, the increase in their population density, as well as the infrastructural changes, have made the population of these localities claim the status of parish by its sites”.
As examples, he cited Nazaré and Amparo, also a municipality of Funchal, and Garachico, in the municipality of Câmara de Lobos.
The PCP representative mentioned that the Autonomous Region of Madeira is made up of 11 municipalities and 54 parishes, only two of which were created after the autonomous regime, namely Ilha (municipality of Santana), in 1989, and Jardim da Serra (Câmara de Lobos municipality), in 1996.
“With the Autonomy it was possible to develop the towns, increase their population density, but unfortunately the administrative division of the territory has basically been petrified since the 19th century,” he argued.
Ricardo Lume considered that “today there are places and localities that have more population and more infrastructure than certain municipalities” in Madeira.
The process of creating parishes and developing a policy of proximity to citizens, he added, “had a setback at the national level due to the process of aggregation/extinction of 1,168 parishes, operated in 2013 by the PSD/CDS government, and which it deserved a response and widespread opposition from the population and from the vast majority of municipal bodies.”
In Madeira, although there was no extinction of parishes, he added, “this process conditioned the legitimate aspirations of the population to get their town to become a parish.”
“Given this reality, it is time that, in the Autonomous Region of Madeira, there is an administrative reorganization of the territory appropriate to the new infrastructural and demographic reality, guaranteeing its management in close connection with local and democratic power”, he concluded. .
Source: Observadora
