Costa says full reinstatement of teachers’ working hours is ‘unsustainable for the country’

The Prime Minister this Monday again rejected full reimbursement of teachers’ hours, deeming the costs “unsustainable for the country” and because “there must be fairness” for all professions in the public service.

In an interview with TVI/CNN, António Costa was asked whether he followed the PSD proposal to fully restore the frozen service life of these specialists within five years.

“No, I expressed myself very clearly (…) I have no illusions, so there are no disappointments. I will not make commitments that I know I cannot fulfill and that are unsustainable for the country,” he said. .

The Prime Minister ironically stated that he understood that the SDP, “which survived the career freeze well,” now “wants to make up for lost time,” but presented another argument for rejecting the Social Democrats’ proposal.

“I cannot restore the time of one career if I do not restore all the others, we must treat everyone equally: we applied to teachers the same thing that we applied to other public servants,” he said, given that the Azores and Madeira are there , where for this professional class there was a complete restoration of time – “they were and should be treated differently.”

António Costa stated that “there are new themes” in education and chose to highlight two measures that will be applied by the government from the next academic year for this professional class: increasing the number of staff in the pedagogical zone from 10 to 63, reducing the distance placement of teachers and enabling teachers , placed in a school, be integrated into the school until the completion of the three-year full schedule.

In the second part of the TVI/CNN interview, in which he was questioned by citizens previously selected by the market research company, the prime minister also said the government is discussing measures with municipalities to support housing in areas of housing shortage. like Lisbon or Algarve, which can be applied to both teachers and doctors.

Costa was also asked about the future of Lisbon Airport and reiterated that following the recommendation of an independent technical committee, a “political decision will be immediate” by the end of this year.

António Costa said he had no indication from PSD President Luís Montenegro that the party with which he agreed in the summer to adopt a decision-making methodology could break that agreement, but he reserved a barb for the Social Democrats.

“This is not the first time that SDP has surprised me, I have already said everything and vice versa about the airport,” he said.

Health, salaries, higher education, culture, support for the elderly – these are just some of the topics on which the head of government was questioned, as well as housing – an area for which he left a guarantee.

“In my opinion, the measures may be defective, but they are not excessive. Of all the demonstrations, the one I saw again was this weekend, because all rights are important, but it is no coincidence that housing is the first right, without housing we cannot realize any of the other rights,” he stressed.