Isilda Gomes, president of the PS National Association of Mayors and the Portimão City Council, defended today that mayors “do not have to be afraid” of assuming competences.
“Mayors don't have to be afraid and they showed it now at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic, that is, we went ahead and did what we had to do and, therefore, there is no need to be afraid”, he said.
Speaking at the XXV Congress of the National Association of Portuguese Municipalities (ANMP), taking place in Aveiro, the socialist said that there was "still a lot" to be done in terms of the transfer of competences, considering, however, that mayors still deserve more responsibilities .
“With regard to the transfer of competences, dear colleagues, let me tell you something: what we have to put on the table is, above all, what is most important to the citizens and not what is more important to us”, he stressed.
Isilda Gomes said that she has already received all the powers of the State for the current decentralization process and that all the presidents and directors of the school groupings are “pendingly” thanking the municipality for having assumed responsibilities in the area of education.
Defending the attribution of “even more responsibilities”, the socialist argued that it is the mayors who are closest to the citizens and who best solve their problems.
"We have to assume it head on, without fear, because those who are afraid do not come to a local authority, those who are afraid do not run for mayor, or council president, or municipal assembly president," he reinforced.
In terms of the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR), Isilda Gomes highlighted the issue of housing, alerting the mayors as this is a “possibility” of solving, if not completely, at least a large part of social housing.
Only 98 municipalities had accepted skills in education and 20 in health by the end of the first half of this year, according to the most recent report published by the monitoring committee of this process, which runs until 2022.
The process of transferring competences from the central administration to the 278 municipalities on the continent has been gradual since 2019, but the acceptance of these tasks by these municipalities will be mandatory from April 01, 2022, namely in education, health, culture and Social action , areas that involve the transfer of a financial envelope through the State Budget.
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