The parliamentary leader of the CDS-PP, António Lopes da Fonseca, today demonstrated his solidarity with the population due to the measure implemented by the Municipality of Santa Cruz, which placed parking meters in several streets of Caniço de Baixo. The centrist did the math and said that workers in that area could spend around 10% of their salary on parking.
In an initiative carried out today in Caniço, Lopes da Fonseca states that “just look around us, we are in an area of residents who do not have the possibility of parking their cars between 8:00 am and 7:00 pm, otherwise they will have to pay 40 cents per hour”. “A person who works from 8:00 am to 6:00 pm has to leave his car parked for those 10 hours. In other words, the parking meter machines say that the maximum is 5 hours of parking (two euros / 40 cents per hour). But people who work 8 to 10 hours a day, will have to pay for those 8 to 10 hours and not the 5 hours that the Mayor of Santa Cruz recently told the media that would be the maximum that users would pay”, reiterates, adding that ” this means that a person who is here between 8 and 10 hours working will pay between €3.20 and €4.00 per day. Let’s imagine that the person earns €800 per month, 10% of his salary will be used to pay for parking. We are talking about €80 per month”.
“How is it possible that the Mayor of Santa Cruz is so insensitive, to the point of not taking into account either the difficulties that people are currently experiencing, or the residents themselves who are forced to pay too”, he questions. Lopes da Fonseca denies that, contrary to what Filipe Sousa said, this is a measure to discipline traffic. “We just look around and see that the parks are almost all empty because people can’t pay these exorbitant amounts”, he says.
The party calls on President Filipe Sousa, “in the name of the indignation of the people who live here and of the hundreds of people who work in restaurants and hotels”, to ponder and to “keep in mind that half of these parking meters that are here should be removed to return them free of charge to both the residents and the people who work here”. “If you don’t, you are clearly demonstrating a profound insensitivity towards the population”, concludes Lopes da Fonseca.