The Liberal Initiative will present a proposal in parliament aimed at refunding Comboios de Portugal users the cost of a travel card corresponding to the days of the strike, party leader Rui Rocha announced on Monday.
The Liberals want “a refund of the fare corresponding to the days when there is no service and on which, therefore, people must travel either by alternative public transport, or by their own means, or by transportation services in taxis and Uber,” the IL president explained.
Rui Rocha was this Monday at the train station in Agualva-Kasem district, municipality of Sintra, on the day when the workers of the CP — Comboios de Portugal are again on strike because of the impasse in wage negotiations.
“We are going to push forward a legislative initiative in this sense so that at least when people do not use the service, the amount they have invested in a monthly pass can be returned to them,” he said.
When asked about the proposal, Rui Rocha clarified that the refund would be made “proportionately”, demonstrating that the €40 monthly pass would be divided into 30 days and that the amount corresponding to each day on which there was a strike and “on which there was no minimum services” will be returned to users.
In addition to this proposal, IL argues that “if possible, there should be competition from rail service providers” and the ceding of transport services to the CP itself.
On another day of the Communist Party workers’ strike, the leader of the Liberal Initiative accused the state of being a “bad employer.”
“It doesn’t solve the social conflict, strikes follow one after the other, and this is also consistent with what we said in IL, that this is an exhaustion of the solutions that PS and the government have for the country, for the economy, for society, but also for the management of public companies,” he criticized.
Rui Rocha pointed to “a situation of permanent social conflict within the Communist Party” which has two consequences, the first is “from the point of view of its own workers who are discontented and manifest themselves in this way.”
“Second is the impact on CP rail service users who are experiencing the real test of a series of strike days. They don’t know what time they will be back at the end of the working day, and they also don’t know what financial resources they have to invest because they buy a pass to access the service, but then they don’t have the service,” he lamented.
While at this train station on the Sintra line, Rui Rocha approached some people waiting on the platform, including a woman named Younis, who was waiting for a train to Lisbon Oriente, and confessed to the IL leader that she did not know what time it was. arrive or return home.
“Sometimes the hostess is in a good mood, sometimes in a bad mood, one time she pays for a taxi, another time she doesn’t want to pay anything, and then, when it’s time to return, I come home at eleven. at night because I have to run on Uber, on the subway, until you arrive,” he complained.
According to a statement sent by the company to Lusa, CP blocked 143 trains out of 249 scheduled from 00:00 to 08:00 this Monday due to a strike by the carrier’s workers.
CP workers start new strikes this Monday, with the carrier warning of “serious unrest” until March 2 to protest the stalemate in wage negotiations, which also involves Infraestruturas de Portugal (IP).
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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