Government to take ‘concrete measures’ for immigrant construction workers

Vice Minister of Territorial Cohesion Manuel Castro Almeida said Thursday that the government will take “concrete measures” to integrate immigrant construction workers, whose absence he considers the biggest threat to the implementation of the PRR.

“The government will also take very specific measures to speed up the entry into Portugal of people who are able to work immediately, especially in the construction sector. They will be given special access to entry,” he told reporters in Porto today.

Castro Almeida spoke on the sidelines of the Lisbon-Porto metropolitan area meeting on integrated operations in disadvantaged communities within the framework of the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR), which took place this Thursday at the Rosa Mota Pavilion.

When asked what these measures were, the minister did not specify, saying only that “this measure is being developed” by the executive branch.

Earlier, a government official noted that the “main” risk of implementing the PRR “could be a shortage of labor to simultaneously complete such a large amount of work,” which could lead to a lack of proposals for government tenders.

Asked how this risk coexists with the most restrictive immigration measures already taken by the government, Castro Almeida responded that “policy is really about management and the compatibility of conflicting interests.”

“We need labor, most of the labor is a product of immigration, but we also cannot have uncontrolled immigration. Anyone who comes to work will not experience any difficulties,” he assured.

In his speech at the agglomerations meeting, Castro Almeida also said that the application and payment deadlines for the PRR would be “even tighter” than for other European funds, for which he had already announced there would be a maximum of 60 days to be analysed and 30 days to process payment requests.