PAN advocates for more housing and access to family doctors for university students

A PAN spokesman said this Monday in Faro that student housing and access to a family doctor must be guaranteed to the more than 130 thousand displaced university students.

“Student accommodation should be a priority. We need to increase government supply and also for the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR) itself to help increase the number of beds available,” said Ines de Souza Real during a visit to the Algarve. part of the campaign for the March 10 legislative elections.

Stressing that there were “17,000 identified needs” for student accommodation at the national level, the leader felt it was necessary to “go further” on the issue, estimating that there were more than 130,000 displaced university students across the country. .

Ines de Souza Real recalled that tourism and seasonality in some regions of the country, such as the Algarve, do not contribute to the stability of young displaced students who are often forced to leave their temporary homes.

To solve the problem and ensure students have “stable housing,” there needs to be “more government offers” and “incentives for landlords,” especially in the form of tax breaks, he argues.

“The government should ensure student support programs and incentives for landlords to join accommodation programs that may have best practices that do not force students, come summer, to have to dismantle all their rooms or leave where they are and instead focus on their studies. “, he added.

A representative from the People-Animals-Nature Party cited access to health care for displaced students, especially primary care, as another challenge.

Sousa Real considered it “essential” to ensure that, from the moment students enroll at a university distant from their place of residence, they have access to a family doctor “attached to that institution.”

During her visit to the Algarve, Ines de Sousa Real also addressed the issue of drought and water scarcity, calling for the dissemination of best practices in combating water loss and waste, reforestation and promoting soil regeneration.

“We won’t be able to hold water by praying or waiting for San Pedro to do its part meteorologically,” he quips.

The PAN leader criticized the Ministry of Environment for recently reducing the amount of water consumed by the region’s agricultural sector, without distinguishing between “orange growers or those using traditional methods” and intensive producers of avocados and other products “who somehow do not have best practices or respect for the soil,” he said.

Following the declaration of a drought emergency in the Algarve in January, a series of emergency measures were introduced, such as a 25% reduction in the amount of water used by the agricultural sector.