Antonio Costa claims he gave teachers ‘everything possible’

This Monday, the Prime Minister said that his governments had given teachers everything that was possible for the profession over the past few years and believed that he had solved a structural problem in the health sector.

Antonio Costa spoke to CNN/Portugalat the official residence of the Prime Minister, four days after the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, officially dissolved his government.

“Obviously, it’s disappointing to see the work of the legislature interrupted twice. On top of two years of paralysis due to Covid-19. There are many things that are in the government program that we will not be able to do,” lamented the leader of the executive branch, before touching on the current situation in the country in the field of education.

Antonio Costa noted that “teachers want more than what has already been achieved.”

“For our part, I think we achieved everything that could be achieved, and it wasn’t much. We unfrozen the career, the clock stopped, the clock started ticking again. Secondly, we have partially restored the length of service of teachers. It was not the whole, but it was a part,” he asserted.

At the same time, the Prime Minister insisted that the unfreezing of careers for teachers “was exactly the same as for all other specialists in the state whose careers depend on time.” .

“We treated teachers as equals. Already this year, since the dialogue has been constant throughout this time, we have even introduced a number of acceleration mechanisms,” he added.

Confronted with teachers’ dissatisfaction with their government, he countered that “those who govern make decisions that deserve great applause and make decisions that deserve criticism.”

“There are teachers who criticize. I think Portuguese society as a whole was very understanding of what we did and tried to treat it fairly,” he said.

Regarding the health sector, the Prime Minister said he had addressed the “fundamental problem of insufficient funding”.

“We have an increase of almost 70% in the state budget for 2024 compared to the budget we had in 2015. bills, this is a problem that has been solved,” he said.

António Costa also said his government had carried out “the most profound reform since the creation of the National Health Service (SNS)”, “with the creation of an executive branch”.

“And we saw a huge increase in wages, especially for doctors. It is important not to forget that last week the government reached an agreement with one of the trade unions, the only one that was ready to negotiate in good faith and to the end, which was the Independent Union of Doctors (DA),” he said.

When asked whether he had concluded that his Government had left a positive legacy in health, the Prime Minister replied: “The SNA, which is obviously under great strain, has endured two years of pandemic during which it has faced a new demographic context. Faced with a set of new technologies, it became simultaneously possible to solve a structural problem: financing versus public accounts.”

“Secondly, we managed to create a new management model; thirdly, we moved towards generalizing the ESF model B, and also implemented this in relation to hospitals. These reforms have now been introduced. In a few months the results will be more noticeable,” he promised.