PCP Secretary General Paulo Raimundo this Friday defended a general wage increase of 15% to help the Portuguese cope with the rising cost of living, and assured that the measure would not jeopardize public accounts.
“We are following the CGTP proposal: a 15% increase in wages with a minimum increase of 150 euros. And a solution, a path that this year will introduce a national minimum wage of about 1,000 euros, because right now it is needed, it is not in 2028,” he said.
There is no point – excuse the expression – pushing your belly with those wild ideas that 2028 will be the way it will be. No. This is needed now. We need to solve the problem of wages now, because now people need wages to pay their bills,” reiterated Paulo Raimundo.
According to the communist leader, who spoke to journalists during an initiative with Autoeuropa workers in Palmela, Setúbal district, it is also necessary to “respond to access to the National Health Service, valuing those who work there, holding the bank accountable.” – whose profits amount to 12 million euros a day – to resist rising interest rates, repeal the rental law and create a public network of kindergartens in the country.”
Faced with the impact that a 15% wage increase and all the other measures advocated by the PCP would have on government spending, Paulo Raimundo considered that this set of measures depended on political decisions and gave several examples of areas in which it could be save.
“The problem with the right accounts is that the right accounts are always for the same people, because we have major economic groups with profits of 25 million euros a day (…), we have a state budget that provides 1600 million euros. euros in tax breaks to those economic groups that have 25 million euros in profit per day, we have a state budget that transfers more than half of the budget of the National Health Service (SNS) – 8 billion euros – to businesses deprived of the disease,” said Paulo Raimundo , wondering where the correct reports are.
Regarding the protest by the PSP and GNR security forces over the fact that the government has significantly increased the risk subsidy only for the judicial police, the PKP leader said that he is well aware of the “just demands and concerns of the security forces.”
“I would say that we had, inexplicably, the icing on the cake that triggered all this, and it was the right decision of the government to attribute – and rightly so – the increase in the risk subsidy to the judicial police, but who inexplicably left in on the side of the rest of the security forces. I can’t understand,” said Paulo Raimundo, repeating the idea that in this case, too, it’s not about a lack of money, but about political options.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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