The residents of Albufeira have three more months to regularize their bills for water, sewage and solid waste, in cases where tax processes were wrongly instituted, automatically, during the first confinement, when there were «changes to the reading and service», announced the Municipality of Albufeirense.
This decision was taken at the last Chamber meeting, on the proposal of José Carlos Rolo, the municipality's president.
The Albufeirense mayor recalls that the Chamber suspended, at the time, the meter reading service, “in order to promote physical distance”. Now, the municipality "acknowledges that there have been some interruptions in postal services, leading to some consumers not having received the invoices issued".
The automatic introduction of tax proceedings for non-payment, "has harmed some residents, who found themselves in this situation, without any fault", explained José Carlos Rolo.
Thus, the proposal presented by the mayor and approved by the executive includes three amending measures, from the outset "the granting of a period of three months, without additional interest, so that the targeted citizens can proceed with the respective regularization", with the deadline to run from February 1st.
The other measures are "the total or partial extinction of cases generated improperly" and "the return, by the municipality, of the value of costs and interest charged in tax enforcement proceedings incurred by consumers, in the context of these proceedings".
“These are measures that correct a lapse that cannot be blamed on anyone. The containment measures in the first wave of the pandemic generate several confusions and this was one of them, which we are correcting», illustrated José Carlos Rolo.
The mayor also stresses that “the citizens who found themselves in this situation are already being informed, by letter. We apologize for the serious inconvenience the situation has caused. We therefore appeal to the understanding of citizens, as, as is known, these situations should not, but can occur in phases of major complications such as this one in the pandemic».
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