PS asks for a letter from the President of the Institute of Social Protection to pensioners

This Friday, the PS asked the Minister of Labor to send to Parliament a copy of the letter from the President of the Social Security Institute to pensioners on changes to the Solidarity Supplement for Senior Citizens (CSI).

The request, addressed to Minister Maria do Rosario Palma Ramalho, was signed by Socialist Party Vice President Thiago Barbosa Ribeiro and former Secretary of State and current PS MP Miguel Cabrita.

In the text, the two Socialist MPs allude to the fact that on Wednesday the minister’s office told Lusa that there was a “letter from the President of the Social Security Institute informing of the changes.” [no CSI]a procedure that occurs whenever there is a change in Social Security benefits.”

For the socialist bench, “what is not at stake is purely informational communication between the service itself and the beneficiaries of the system, which is healthy and desirable when carried out in objective terms and outside of election campaign periods.” But the PS parliamentary group understands “that it is necessary to know in full the contents of this letter, which is now referred to, so that its contents can be carefully examined.”

Miguel Cabrita and Thiago Barbosa Ribeiro then specify that a “full copy” of this letter must be sent to the parliamentary committee on labor and social security.

In presenting the request, two PS deputies mentioned the reason for the current disagreement with the government.

According to the PS, after the changes to the Unified State Property came into force, a message appeared on the government’s social networks that “the Minister of Labor, Solidarity and Social Protection sent a letter to pensioners,” informing about the recently introduced changes.

“Similarly, the government portal reported that “the Minister of Labour, Solidarity and Social Security wrote to the beneficiaries of the CSI, including publishing the text of the letter in question, with propaganda content and signed by the government official herself.”

“Based on this information presented in official government media, the PS parliamentary group addressed a question to the Minister of Labour, Solidarity and Social Security, criticizing the sending of the letter and the propaganda tone of the above-mentioned text – criticism intensified during the election campaign period – and questioning this unprecedented an action that could set a precedent for contacting social security databases for political communication purposes,” he adds.

However, the PS notes that in the response, an official source from the office of Maria do Rosario Palma Ramalho considered that the assumptions of the formal question were “false,” guaranteeing that “the minister did not send any letters to pensioners.”

Also in the same response, he objects that the minister wrote “an open letter with absolutely objective content and without any political background, published on the websites of the Ministry of Labour, Solidarity and Social Protection and the government.”

“After this note, a review of the publication on the government portal revealed that the text had been changed without any justification in this regard and now contains the expression “open letter,” which did not exist previously. However, a message appeared on social networks today and continues to specifically indicate the sending of a letter,” two PS deputies note.