The Municipality of Portimão will adopt, from December 1st (or earlier, the 2nd, because the first day of the month is still a holiday), a Municipal Plan for Expenses Containment.
A first proposal of this Plan (draft) was presented on Thursday of last week, at a meeting called for that purpose, by the president and vice president of the Chamber to the heads of both the Chamber structure and the two municipal companies - Portimão Urbis and EMRP.
Manuel da Luz, president of the municipality, told the Sul Informação that discussion of the document “is still ongoing. Some measures were suggested that are being studied by the Executive, but until the 16th of November a deadline was given for the collection of suggestions by the heads, to later be evaluated and, if necessary, take the form of an order».
For now, it is still difficult to quantify the amount of expenditure reduction that will be obtained by applying the measures contained in the document under discussion.
This Expense Containment Plan is intended to be yet another contribution to the Portimão Council's objective of reducing its expenditure by 10 million euros. “The Plan is one of the instruments for this reduction”, explained Manuel da Luz.
But lion's share this reduction will be up to the measures included in the municipality's Financial Sanitation Plan, on which the Court of Auditors will have to pronounce itself by tomorrow, Thursday, November 10th.
The Expense Containment Plan divides the measures into service prohibitions and rules. Among the prohibitions is, for example, the recourse to 'the systematic acquisition of goods and services to meet requests for material, logistical or other support, made by the various associations, namely, the purchase of paints, construction materials, rental of equipment (stage, sound, tents, etc.)».
There will also be total cuts in the «acquisition or production of material for sale and/or offering (among others, of various publications, edition or re-publishing of books, art objects, t-shirts, cups, medals)», as well as in « organization/offer of dinners/lunches/cocktails associated with the various existing initiatives requested from the Municipality».
It will also be prohibited to “contract services for the design of any promotional material produced/edited by the Municipality”, opting instead to resort to “the existing internal technical and human resources”.
Another prohibition is "printing in color". In fact, the draft of the Plan, in a total of 15 pages, to which the Sul Informação had access, it contains a notice on its home page saying the following: «the printing of this document had a unit cost of €0,30. If the printing had been in color the cost would have been €1,20».
Among the measures that should become the rule in the Chamber and in the Municipal Companies of Portimão is, for example, the need to «perform their activities during normal working hours, avoiding, as much as possible, proposing overtime».
On the other hand, «internal mobility will be promoted and the collaboration of internal human resources in all organic areas will be maximized».
Another measure is “to reduce the consumption of office and cleaning material to the minimum necessary”, “to opt for the reuse of materials”, or even “to reduce the consumption of electricity, communications, water, fuels”.
All these measures will be monitored and monitored, step by step, by an Office for Monitoring and Controlling the Financial Sanitation Plan and the Shareholder Function of the Local Business Sector.
In practice, the creation of this Office, which, Sul Informação he found out, it should be under the direct responsibility of the Vice President of the Chamber Luís Carito, it is intended to tighten control over the various bureaucratic phases of activities potentially generating expenses.
The Portimão Council (PS) is not the first municipality in the Algarve to take measures to contain its expenditure. For example, the cases of the Chambers of Faro (PSD), Vila Real de Santo António (PSD), Tavira (PS) or even Lagoa (PSD).
The general objective has been to radically reduce expenditures, in a situation in which, either due to cuts in State transfers or because of the drop in revenue at the level of IMI and building permits, municipalities are facing serious financial problems.
Comments