Coimbra, Portugal, July 2, 2024 (Lusa) - Portugal's minister of labour, solidarity and social security, Rosário Palma Ramalho, said in Coimbra on Tuesday that poverty in Portugal was at levels that is unacceptable in a developed country.
"Poverty is a real problem in Portugal which, at the levels it is at, is hardly admissible in a formally developed state," she told reporters.
The minister was speaking at the end of her speech at the opening of the II Congress on the Present and Future(s) of Social Security, organised by the Faculty of Law of the University of Coimbra (FDUC).
Noting that the government led by Luís Montenegro has been in office for three months, he recalled that the executive's first measures in the social area were aimed "at the poorest of the poor".
"Social Security has a future because we have an intergenerational pact that obliges it to have a future," the minister said while acknowledging that "sustainability is a problem that has to be addressed".
"We have to go there by other means," argued Rosário Palma Ramalho, which, in her opinion, allows us to say that Social Security "probably doesn't have a future, it has futures," despite facing difficulties.
Ensuring its sustainability "involves several different measures that will make it possible to overcome some of the difficulties", she said.
Earlier, speaking in the large auditorium of the Colégio da Trindade, she emphasised the importance of "making the various possible sources of funding for Social Security compatible".
On the other hand, Rosário Palma Ramalho drew attention to "the phenomenon of poverty" in Portugal, where there are currently around 2.1 million people at risk of poverty, even though social security benefits cover them.
"This is terrible" in a country whose at-risk-of-poverty rate has "fallen very little" in recent decades, which is why it is "urgent that Social Security makes its action effective" in this area.
The congress's opening session, which ends on Wednesday, also featured speeches by the programme's scientific coordinator, Licínio Lopes Martins, the president of the Coimbra Court of Appeal, João Manuel Loureiro, and the director of the FDUC, Jónatas Machado, as well as João Nuno Calvão da Silva, a professor at this faculty and vice-rector of the University of Coimbra.
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