The leader of the Left Block (BE) alerted today for the problem of lack of day-care centers in the country, with “only 50% of the coverage rate”, having affirmed that the solution passes through the integration of the service in the education system.
“We are about to start a new school year, a new year in which parents are looking for a place to leave their children and can’t find one,” said Mariana Mortágua in Alcorriol, at the annual sardine party organized by the Torres Novas (Santarém) bloquista council, noting that “in Portugal, the daycare coverage rate is 50%” and that “it affects thousands of families.
The BE coordinator, who announced an “interpellation to the government for next week to debate the problem of day-care centers”, stressed that this “is a serious problem, in a country that is struggling with birth rates and in which families are under a lot of pressure due to the problem of housing prices and essential goods”, and said that “it is possible to do things differently and well”.
In this sense, he defended, and taking into account that “free day care centers”, a measure he praised, “do not reach everyone who needs them”, the BE defends that, on the one hand, day care centers “should be part of the education system” and that, on the other hand, the government should allow City Halls to make an agreement with Social Security in order to have their own day care centers”.
The annual lunch of the Left Bloc of Torres Novas, which marks its eighth edition, had 121 registered participants. The local council highlighted the importance of fraternization among militants, and also addressed issues of concern to the population, such as housing prices and the lack of family doctors.
In the case of housing, the BE leader said that “the problem (…) will not be solved just by raising the effort rates” and that this will only happen “when the banks are forced to renegotiate the mortgages and lower the interest rates that people are currently being charged”.
Regarding health, Mariana Mortágua said that the problem of the lack of doctors in Torres Novas is “structural” and “transversal” to the whole country and that it happens because the government “didn’t take care to have a way to attract doctors to the places where it is more difficult to be”.
For the BE leader, “there is a way to solve” the problem, having recalled that “doctors have been saying this for a long time.
“It is to create attractive careers for doctors to settle in the National Health Service (NHS)” so that we have an NHS with organizational capacity throughout the territory, and not as it happens now. The government should listen to the professionals”, he concluded.