The Confederation of Tourism of Portugal (CTP) announced today that it considers it unacceptable the prime minister's proposal to convert unemployed tourism workers into workers of Private Institutions of Social Solidarity (IPSS) mutualities, mercies or cooperatives.
“If the Government considers the resumption of tourist activity and the thousands of jobs associated with the sector that has been the engine of the national economy for lost, we will not do it. What we need is measures that allow us to maintain the activity and jobs, such as the extension of the lay off simplified that ended. Our solution will always be to recover tourism companies and not give up on them», the president of the CTP Confederation, Francisco Calheiros, in a statement.
On Wednesday, the prime minister, António Costa, defended that the unemployed in tourism, one of the areas hardest hit by the crisis generated by the covid-19 pandemic, can be reconverted, with the necessary training, as workers in the social sector.
“Contrary to the statements made yesterday [Wednesday] by the Prime Minister at the signing ceremony of the declaration of commitment to partnership for Exceptional Strengthening of Social and Health Services, the CTP considers that tourism workers do not have basic training to provide health care and hygiene to citizens in a situation of frailty or to the elderly population», adds the CTP in the statement released today.
“In recent years, we have made a strong commitment to training and qualifying our tourism professionals, which we cannot devalue”, stresses Francisco Calheiros.
For the head of the confederation, "the priority" will have to be "to ensure that companies do not close, through decisive measures for the resumption of activity such as the extension of tax moratoriums and reimbursement of funding for the second half of 2021, the reinforcement of the non-repayable capitalization lines for tourism and the resurgence of the venture capital tourism fund'.
On Wednesday, António Costa left that proposal at the end of the intervention of the signing ceremony of the declaration of partnership commitment for the Exceptional Strengthening of Social and Health Services and the launch of the PARES 3.0 program.
“A final word about employment. As we all know, one of the sectors hardest hit by this economic crisis and the one that will be hit hardest by this economic crisis is, for example, the tourism sector», said the chief executive.
According to the prime minister, "many of the thousands of people who are currently losing their jobs in the tourism sector are people who already have basic training, who already have an experience of personal care, of personal relationships."
"They are a fundamental resource for, with training of course, they can be easily reconverted to continue working with people now in the institutions they are associated with in IPSS [Private Social Solidarity Institutions], in mutual societies, in mercies or in cooperatives," he proposed.
According to the prime minister, "in a few months more than 100 jobs were destroyed."
“In a few months we reached 800 families depending on the situation of the lay off and only keep the job because the job was being supported by the State and by themselves as a loss of a third of their income», he enumerated.
“Because we have to intelligently use the little money we have at our disposal and with every euro we have to be able to meet at least three goals: fight the economic recession and revive the economy, create jobs, revive the economy and create jobs work that are socially useful for society», he defended.
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