Lisbon prison guards go on strike to avoid closure and career advancement

Guards at the Lisbon Prison (EPL) went on strike this Thursday at 00:00 until April, and the National Union of Prison Guards (SNCGP) promises to do everything to try to stop the closure of the prison.

In addition to the planned closure of this prison facility, the professional security class is demanding increased wages, career advancement, travel allowances, and attractiveness and security conditions at a time when these professionals have been attacked in prisons. Coimbra and Monsanto.

Speaking to the Lusa agency last Monday, SNCGP leader Frederico Morais criticized the government’s decision to close the EPL by 2026 – with this number of prisoners distributed among other prisons in the Lisbon metropolitan region – and was directly aimed at the still Minister of Justice Catarina. Sarmento e Castro, given that “she did not even care about the safety of the population where the prisoners would be placed, nor the safety of the guards or prisoners.”

Frederico Morais explained that last week he was presented with a project for the first stage of closing the nuclear submarine, which provides for the transfer of 200 prisoners and another 24 guards to Tires.

The SNCGP chief stressed that the prison has between 116 and 120 guards and warned that this intention would leave less than a hundred guards to supervise over 500 prisoners.

“The strike will last until April, but there is no deadline. Until there is a serious reaction and until the catastrophic closure of the nuclear submarine is changed, because they cannot close the prison for the sake of closing it,” he said categorically. expressing his opposition to the prison’s closure: “We challenge even if EPL is closed, much less how it is done.”

Mindful that there are prison guards with more than 20 years’ experience who are still in the third level of their careers, the union leader left a warning for the incoming government to schedule negotiation meetings within a week of taking office.

The strike at EPL, which affects all exits outside the prison, began at 00:00 this Thursday and will continue, according to SNCGP, until April.

The strike comes as a prison guard was attacked in the face with a sharp pen by an inmate at the maximum security prison in Monsanto, Lisbon, on Tuesday, and a guard at the Coimbra prison was hospitalized on Monday. treatment after a prisoner’s head attack.