The Socialist party Seksal on Wednesday denied statements made by the health minister who said she had “not seen any indication” from the previous government that a competition would be launched for the Seksal hospital.
In a statement, PS Seixal confirms that the project exists and says that the Minister If you don’t know, you should know, The competition to prepare the hospital project was subject to a legal challenge by one of the competitors, a process that did not end until the Supreme Administrative Court’s ruling, issued in early 2023, with the designer beginning to prepare the project.”
On a recent visit to the municipality to inaugurate the new Inovar Family Health Unit, Health Minister Ana Paula Martins said she started her duties on April 2, 2024 and that the competition had not started despite a promise by the previous Socialist government for the end of 2023 and then for the first quarter of 2024.
Ana Paula Martins also said that the 2024 state budget includes a projected budget for ARS LVT, an entity that will be extinguished in the first half of 2024, so “it will be difficult to launch the competition.”
In the statement released on Wednesday, the PS Seixal board, led by Samuel Cruz, stated that the amount of 27 million euros, out of the total 88 million that the project is expected to cost, is included in the state budget for 2024. “In other words, this item, even exceeding the needs of this year, is also present” confirms the PS.
Regarding the allocation of funds from the Recovery and Resilience Plan, PS Seixal recognizes that The government “has a knife and cheese in its hand.”Since April of this year, as well as with regard to allocating financial appropriations in the state’s general budget for the year 2025.
“It is up to the current government to keep its commitments, and it is not in its interest to apologise to the previous government, even less when that does not correspond to the reality of the facts,” says PS Sixal.
In September, then-Health Minister Manuel Pizarro confirmed that he was in a position to launch a public tender for the construction of the new nearby Seixal hospital by the end of the first quarter of 2024.
“I know that the architectural project for the new hospital near Seixal has already been completed. I don’t know if it has been fully approved by the Regional Health Department of Lisbon and the Tagus Valley (ARSLVT), but it is finished. We will be in a position to launch the tender for the work in the first quarter of next year without a doubt,” said Manuel Pizarro.
Minister promises public tender for new hospital in Seksal in Q1 2024
In March 2023, Manuel Pizarro addressed this issue in visits as part of the “Government + Next” itinerary dedicated to the Setúbal region.
“We finally got a ruling from the Supreme Administrative Court allowing us to contract the project. The designer is working on the project which will be delivered to us in the second half of this year. I would like to say that Between the last quarter of 2023 and the first quarter of 2024, we will finally put the work on the new Seksal Hospital out to tender.Manuel Pizarro explained that this time it will go from paper to reality and what an essential asset it is.
The construction of the Hospital do Seixal, in the Setúbal area, is a demand that has been going on for more than two decades and was already the subject of a protocol between the State and the Seixal Municipal Council, in 2009, and the health unit is scheduled to open in 2012.
After a long wait, it was only in 2018 that the government gave the green light again to go ahead with the construction of the future Hospital du Seixal, at an estimated cost of €25 million, but the public tender for the design and project was halted due to legal issues.
About seven thousand people took part on Saturday in a march and run in defense of the construction of a hospital in the municipality of Seixal, organized by the municipality of Seixal and the Núcleo do Sporting Clube de Portugal do Seixal. A petition was also launched and will be delivered in the Council of the Republic, demanding the urgent construction of the unit, improving access to health care by hiring more doctors for primary health care units, and rehabilitating existing health care centers.
