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The Bloco de Esquerda (BE) of the Lisbon Chamber considered on Monday that “not everything went well” in the municipality’s response to the floods that occurred on Wednesday and defended that the damage could have been less if there had been better coordination.
“Not everything that should have been done in prevention, nor in coordination, nor in alert,” said the BE councilor, in a statement, after having questioned the mayor of Lisbon, Carlos Moedas (PSD), about the municipality’s response to the floods registered on Wednesday night, as a consequence of the intense and persistent rains.
The Bloc accuses the Lisbon Chamber of “lack of coordination”, pointing out that “not everything went well” in supporting the populations affected by the floods in the city.
The human, social and economic damage could have been less with better coordination by the Lisbon City Council. For this reason, Bloco asked Carlos Moedas for a report with the chronology of what happened on Wednesday,” the statement read.
In this context, the BE will deliver, on Tuesday, a formal requirement requesting a technical report on the floods registered last week.
In addition to the floods, the Bloco spoke out against the public bidding proposal, with international publicity, for the “Preparation of the Lisbon Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan”, for a maximum amount of 424,350 euroswith VAT included, which was approved this Monday, in a private session of the council executive, with a vote against BE, an abstention by the independent councilor Paula Marques elected by the PS/Livre coalition and the votes in favor of the remaining representatives elected, namely, seven from the leadership of the PSD/CDS-PP (which governs without an absolute majority), five from the PS, two from the PCP and one from Livre.
The proposal was presented by the Mobility Verifier, Ângelo Pereira (PSD), who referred that the services of the Lisbon Municipal Chamber (CML) “do not have technical capacity” for the elaboration of the Lisbon Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan, an argument that the BE would not you agree.
“Urban planning and mobility services have all the competence and technical capacity and this tender of almost half a million euros to a private company is incomprehensible, when CML has the capacity to do so”, the Block has indicated, justifying the vote against, to to which is added the criticism for the lack of progress in the construction of the planned cycle lanes and in the implementation of the reduced emissions zone (ZER).
For BE, the CML could make the Lisbon Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan, with municipal services, “faster and less expensive”.
Despite voting against the public tender, the Bloco de Esquerda pointed out that there is the possibility of a different vote regarding the specifics of the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan, when the CML meeting is held.
Source: Observadora
