Mayor of Gaia, Luís Filipe Menezes has harshly criticised the government for standing in his municipality’s way over a project to build 2,500 homes for young people on a derelict military site.
According to SIC Notícias today, “the PSD mayor considers (defence minister) Nuno Melo to be irresponsible and is threatening to send young people to protest outside the Prime Minister’s residence”.
At the heart of the controversy is a plot of land in Serra do Pilar, owned by the Ministry of Defence.
When contacted by SIC, Gaia Town Council “did not specify the exact location of the land. Luís Filipe Menezes promises to develop a multi-purpose project: affordable homes for young people, sports and cultural facilities, and offices.”
The problem lies in the Ministry of Defence dragging its heels over the transfer of the vacant land to Gaia municipal council.
According to the Ministry, says SIC, the Secretary of State “was available to discuss the possible transfer, but the Mayor of Gaia did not attend a meeting”, scheduled yesterday, for this purpose.
The minister’s office has not clarified whether the invitation was issued before or after Menezes called on the prime minister to intervene, issuing the warning that, unless Nuno Melo is brought up to speed with the urgency of the housing crisis (and acts), he will “put young people at the door of the prime minister’s home”.
As the politician (representing the same party as that in government) told a meeting yesterday: “During the first month of our mandate, we designed a large town for 2,500 young people” in the centre of Gaia with sporting and cultural facilities nearby, offices and openings for the installation of new businesses (…) The only thing that I asked the prime minister was to give us a plot of land where weeds have been growing for 30 years, which (happens to be) five minutes from the Metro that travels to all the universities, and which is a five minute walk from the city of Porto (…) I have been waiting for a year, with businesspeople, with international funds that we want to finance the project, because there is a minister who wants to keep the weeds all to himself until the day he goes, which will be very soon…”
At the same meeting, Menezes revealed that he will deliver 100 homes elsewhere in Gaia by the end of the year and plans to build 5,000 homes during his term of office.
But the blistering attack on Nuno Melo’s perceived dithering has definitely brought a reaction, if not the one Menezes may have desired.
Far from any answer from the prime minister, he has received a tart retort from Nuno Melo”s ministry. A statement referred to yesterday’s meeting, and Menezes’ apparent failure to respond to the Secretary of State’s invitation – and then went into the ‘reasons’ for the failure to move on land that is simply gathering weeds:
“The disposal of land or property belonging to the Ministry of Defence is governed by the Military Infrastructure Act (…) The conditions under which land or other property may be transferred out of the National Defence portfolio are strictly defined by law (the Military Infrastructure Act). A breach of the law is neither possible nor acceptable in a democratic state governed by the rule of law (…) An agreement previously concluded in September 2002, in accordance with the Act, which resulted in the handover of other Army-owned land, situated in the Serra do Pilar, to the municipality of Gaia, has remained unfulfilled by the municipality since that date,” the statement continues. “Nevertheless, the Secretary of State for National Defence, who has jurisdiction over this matter, informed the office of the Mayor of Gaia of his full willingness to meet yesterday, October 22, to discuss the terms of a possible transfer of the land in question to the local authority, in accordance with the Military Infrastructure Act”.
Nuno Melo has ‘had his moment’: now we wait for the next installment in a saga that does indeed seem to fail to recognise the urgency of Portugal’s housing crisis.
Menezes stressed this point yesterday in his speech in which he stressed that, no matter what authorities might like to convey, the “thousands of people (protesting) in the squares of Porto and Lisbon are not all extremists; they are not all radical Islamists or immigrants. The promises of economic growth, better health protection, better education, more protection for the elderly – none of this happened. Anyone who is 40 or even 50 years old understands that they won’t have the socioeconomic capacity that others before had”.
In short, it is time to move, pull up old weeds, and start fixing things.
Source material: SIC Notícias/ Jornal de Notícias/ RTP