The Portuguese fire brigade will ask the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister to the public to address the “dangerous situation” in the sector, threatening not to transport patients who were discharged from the hospital on July 19, 20, 27 and 28. The decision is part of a set of measures that were unanimously approved on Saturday at a meeting of the National Council of the Portuguese Firefighters Association (LBP), which was held in Ponte de Sur.
“It is necessary to alert the government to the way the fire department operates and that is why it was agreed to request hearings from the prime minister [António Costa] And the President of the Republic [Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa]said LBP President Antonio Nunes Lusa.
As he noted, voluntary firefighters’ associations are “in complex financial situations,” so “it is necessary to look at firefighters in a different way, and it is essential to have support for the transportation of non-urgent patients and a more equitable relationship with other civil protection agents.”
Antonio Nunes said that if there is no dialogue in the coming days with the Ministry of Health about transporting unprepared patients, one of the planned actions is not to carry out such transport in ambulances for patients who are discharged from the hospital the next day. The nineteenth, twentieth, twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth of this month. “We don’t want to get to that, but if the Ministry of Health does not wake up with us until the seventeenth or eighteenth, we will not get out of the hospital by ambulances on those days, then you will see how there is a need for firefighters,” stressed the head of the LBP.
Antonio Nunes also said that “if nothing is done, if there is no dialogue”, an extraordinary congress of the Liberal Party will be held on September 16, in the Setúbal region, “where the firefighters will decide what to do”.
Among the measures approved at the meeting, the association announced that it would “stop inviting ANEPC structures [Autoridade Nacional de Emergência e Protecção Civil] to the firefighters’ ceremonies” and that it “will comply strictly with the existing agreement with INEM”.
Another measure approved by the LBP National Board is to publish a list of fire engines over 25 years old.
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