The construction of the new GNR facilities in Matosinhos, in the Freixieiro area, should start next year
Photo: Pedro Granadeiro / Global Imagens
The forecast was advanced by the mayor, Luísa Salgueiro, on Monday, April 3, on the sidelines of the ceremony marking the reopening of the renovated police station in the city centre.
Speaking to journalists, the local authority said that the project is already being prepared and should be concluded in June, to be followed by a public tender for the construction work. Salgueiro noted that construction tenders often "are conflicting", as well as the need for "approval from the Court of Auditors". "I would say that, during 2024, this GNR work will begin, if everything goes according to the normal timetable," she said.
The mayor recalled that the GNR is "provisionally installed, for around 30 years, at Quinta da Conceição", in Leça da Palmeira, in a building that has parts that are "very degraded and at risk". Now that the PSP has freed the old Biquinha school, to return to the city centre police station, it is to this old school that the GNR will be transferred while the new building for the territorial detachment is being constructed, in the parish of Perafita, on land provided by the local authority.
Alongside the Minister of Internal Administration, José Luís Carneiro - who presided over the ceremony of the reopening of the police station and attended the signing of a contract between the Câmara and GNR for the construction of the new building -, Luísa Salgueiro said that the PSP now has "all the conditions to continue to provide a quality service to the community of Matosinhos and to ensure that Matosinhos continues to be one of the safest municipalities in the country, in one of the safest countries in the world".
"Without these rehabilitated facilities and without giving the professionals the conditions to carry out their work, this is not possible. Matosinhos has invested a lot in this area of prevention and also in the area of civil protection, we were the venue of the United Nations European Forum for Resilience, we are the first "resilience hub" recognized by the United Nations in Portugal and this results from a lot of work we have been doing", she added.
Asked if the municipality has already identified vacant houses that may enter the programme presented by the Government for the housing sector, Salgueiro said that this survey has already been done, since this year the IMI rate was increased for "vacant houses in areas of urban pressure". In this regard, she said that, according to the information available, the number of dwellings in question is approximately 110: "Of course these are not all the properties we have vacant, but, according to the rules and with the information available to us via the entities that provide us with data, this is the number we have arrived at so far", she added.
"These dwellings have an increased IMI, according to our regulation and to the rules that we approved for 2023", continued the mayor, concluding: "We are waiting for the diplomas to be approved so that we can apply, obviously, the rules of national scope. What we have done in municipal terms is a fiscal policy that also contributes to freeing up housing for the people that need it. Fiscal policy is also housing policy".
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