“What led us to make this decision were the problems that have been happening at AIMA since its inception, which are closely linked to the lack of personnel,” Artur Cerqueira, a leader of FNSTFPS, told Lusa today, emphasizing that the strike will last until the end of the year.
“There is a significant lack of personnel,” and the new migration mission structure, announced in July by the government to resolve pending processes, is “making hires without transparency,” but “the lack of resources at AIMA remains unresolved,” a “long-delayed promise,” he explained.
FNSTFPS also demands the regularization of the contractual situation of sociocultural mediators, hired by NGOs and IPSSs and on secondment to AIMA. “We demand the integration of all mediators who are doing permanent work,” because the current situation “constitutes an illegal contracted work situation,” said Artur Cerqueira.
AIMA workers are “being pressured to work overtime” and “a public servant cannot refuse to do extra work,” the union leader emphasized.
That’s why the strike notice has a deadline between August 22 and December 31, he explained. “From now on, each worker can decide whether or not to accept these overtime hours,” he explained.
In the FNSTFPS’s list of demands supporting the strike notice, several problems at AIMA are mentioned, including the absence of internal regulations, lack of internal communication, “undersized teams, which translates into work overload and high levels of stress and anxiety.”
According to the document, accessed by Lusa, many of the employees “have already exceeded 150 hours of overtime” in 2024 (the legal limit for public service), but “continue to work overtime without being paid.”
“The Federation considers that the situation we’ve reached results from a set of wrong policies by various governments,” but “the important and urgent thing is for the government to assume its responsibilities and that all measures should be taken urgently,” putting “an end to the trampling of workers’ and citizens’ rights,” the union structure further states.
At the end of July, the Government appointed Pedro Portugal Gaspar to lead AIMA and transferred the then president of the organization, Goes Pinheiro, to the new mission structure for migrations.
The new Mission Structure for the Recovery of Pending Immigrant Processes, envisaged in the Action Plan for Migrations, will have the mission of “resolving the history of more than 400,000 pending regularization processes accumulated over recent years,” the executive then stated.
The structure will have up to 100 specialists, 150 technical assistants, and 50 operational assistants.
As for AIMA, the government promised a “change of orientation,” seeking to “implement the measures advocated in the Action Plan for Migrations presented in early June.”
