President of the IHRU withdrew, but Free warns: “It’s not enough”

O spokesperson for Free Jorge Pinto today condemned the “acceptable and shameful declarations” of the president of the Institute of Housing and Urban Rehabilitation (IHRU) and the silence of the Prime Minister on the demonstrations against the crisis in the sector.

“ The statements [of the President of the IHRU] were shameful, unacceptable and were to a large extent provocative, in the face of everything that is happening in the country,” Jorge Pinto criticised in statements to the Lusa agency on the margins of a visit to the “Amadora BD”, a comic book festival in Amadora, Lisbon district.

The leader of the Free reacted to the fact that the president of the IHRU, Benjamin Pereira, said on Thursday that he did not know “if the current society is available for the level of sacrifice” of the previous one, recalling that his own grandparents emigrated “so that they could have a home”.

Also on Thursday, the Minister of Infrastructure and Housing, Miguel Pinto Luz, considered unhappy the words of the person responsible, who, in a statement today, admitted not to have been happy and retreated.

For Jorge Pinto, this retreat “is not enough”, arguing that the words of IHRU’s guardian showed that people who are “at the top of the state” and have “a word to say about what to do to solve housing problems” show to be away from the “concrete problems of the Portuguese”.

“If the President of the IHRU said what he said yesterday, it is also because he has no real idea of the importance that IHRU has to have to address these problems,” he said.

Jorge Pinto also rejected that young people are “the scapegoat for the government’s lack of political action” in housing.

“ We refuse to have a whole generation that, contrary to their parents, unlike their grandparents, could not have access to a housing at a price that can pay, even working, and even working many hours ", he stressed.

Asked about whether Benjamin Pereira should resign or be dismissed, Jorge Pinto referred to the words of Miguel Pinto Luz, who said he had already asked for explanations about the statements of the person responsible and should draw his conclusions.

Jorge Pinto also criticized the fact that the Prime Minister, Luís Montenegro, did not speak on the subject in recent days, marked by several protests in Lisbon and Porto.

“ We saw a very bellicose attitude, very provocative by members of the Government in the first days when the Portuguese were on the streets, then we saw an attempt to correct this message almost with an apology about what they had said earlier, and on the part of the Prime Minister nothing is said”, he criticized.

The spokesperson for the Free stressed, however, that it is important “not to deviate from the essentials”, insisting on the creation of a Public Housing Fund to “in ten years duplicate public housing in the country”, a National Housing Service and the existence of an IHRU “that is part of the solution and not part of the problem”.

“ We are talking about an IHRU which, sometimes even with local authorities making land available, does not have the capacity to give them any end to an affordable housing. This certainly happens for many reasons, namely lack of professional means and the Free has already several times proposed strengthening the IHRU in terms of human resources, but in addition it needs someone in the presidency of the IHRU that is not someone placed there by party affinity, as is the case of the current president ", argued.

Asked about why he was present today at the “Amadora BD”, a comic book festival created in the 1990s, Jorge Pinto considered it important “to value Culture, at a time when it is often devalued” and stressed the importance of investing in this sector within the next State Budget.