This week was, once again, rich in comments related to the problem of airports that the Government, through the Secretary of State for Infrastructure, has now classified, on a visit to Macau, as a huge “embarrassment”, regretting what happened, widely reported by the media. To solve the problem, the Government not only announced that it had mobilized a task force made up of 5 ministers to monitor developments, [e resolução] of this enormous embarrassment, issuing, in addition, an order that obliges the PSP to substantially reduce the average and maximum waiting times for arrivals, to 20 and 55 minutes respectively, and appointing the National Director of the PSP as coordinator of the “special team” created to manage passenger flows at international airports.
Hugo Espírito Santo also announced, it should be noted, a reformulation of the passenger control space, an increase in e-gates, and an increase in police control boxes, in addition to the always easy criticism of the need to increase the number of police, this at a time when there have never been so many police at the airport border. Basically, the Secretary of State ended up recognizing that the problem is much more structural than personnel, but unfortunately he did not shy away from criticizing the PSP.
The President of ANA, José Luis Arnaut, took advantage of this gift from the supervisor and stuck to the diagnosis, roughly attributing full responsibility for the delays to the PSP, being very inaccurate, not to say implausible, regarding the number of control boxes that have been in operation during peak hours at departures, but especially at entrances, with more than 12,000 passengers, coming from international flights, entering Portugal in a concentrated window of 5 hours.
It would be necessary to remind the president of ANA that within the scope of the concession contract it is up to ANA to guarantee the infrastructural conditions of safety and security, and it is not honest to place the burden of what goes wrong at the airport on the mere lack of police officers. As an example, it should be noted that the most prime commercial space is before the border, which leads passengers to delay their movement to the boxes since after this, unlike what happens in many other airports, there is nothing attractive. This is called infrastructural weaknesses which, in the case of Lisbon airport, place commercial interests before the harmonious flow of passengers.
It is curious that responsibilities continue to be attributed to the PSP, demanding more allocation of resources and, above all, more sacrifice from the Police who work on the border, without them being, by far, remunerated as the SEF Inspectors were – the responsibility of the Government -, and without carrying out expansion works in the control areas and which have been required for more than 2 decades in order to allow for more agile control. [e não menos rigoroso] of passengers – ANA’s responsibility. AND [ainda] Even more curious is ANA, which has implemented successive measures that aim only to increase profits, achieving gains after gains, with record profits of more than 500 million euros, without part of this increase, as a result of the tremendous growth in the flow of passengers, to which the PSP contributes decisively, having been invested in improving the working conditions of the many hundreds of Police officers who ensure not only border control, but also airport security at all international airports. This criticism is even more unfair, when even the parking lot that was provided by ANA to the Police was taken away from them a few years ago, all for economic purposes and to obtain more profits. This is, therefore, the dignity with which ANA observes the work of the Police and which is at the same level as the concern it dedicates to issues of national security at the border and in these critical infrastructures.
And let us have no doubt, the adoption of the simplified control regime, which under the terms of European conventions and diplomas on this matter, should be case-by-case and very exceptional, and will be used in an ordinary way, will put Portugal’s national security at serious risk, opening the door wide open to all criminal networks in the world that see, as they will, this window of opportunity to enter the European space. Situations like this week, in which the PSP managed to detect and detain two suspects accused of human trafficking of minors and aiding illegal immigration, will be seriously compromised by this questionable easing of border control, opening the door, we reinforce, for many other traffickers to take advantage of this green route to promote their criminal activity. September 11th came at a time when commercial logic superseded security requirements, let’s hope we don’t have a replica of a similar event.
Responsibility and promotion of measures must, therefore, be shared with the Government and ANA in order to ensure the creation of minimum working conditions but also fair payment for the thousands of hours that Police officers have to work additionally – They are owed fair remuneration, whether in overtime (preferred) or on a paid basis, to allow for a more balanced management of the few police resources that have been allocated, in an avalanche, to the border, compromising preventive policing and the police response in the territory. We will not be surprised if the Police start to take longer to respond to requests from our population.
As airport activity is so profitable for the concessionaire and for the country’s tourism industry, the difficulty of providing part of the tremendous profits (which will certainly be exceeded this year) for the urgent investment that is required in the PSP and, in particular, in the Police officers who work at airports, is not understandable. It is not only fair, it is necessary.