Minister Ana Mendes Godinho said today that the Government will announce measures this week to include in the Social Security system informal workers who were economically and socially unprotected with the covid-19 pandemic.
“Still this week, at the Government level, we will approve more measures to reach situations that are uncovered”, declared the Minister of Labor, Solidarity and Social Security, in a session that took place at the Social Security Institute, in Lisbon , which was closed by the Prime Minister, António Costa.
According to the minister, in most cases, these measures will seek to respond “to atypical situations, not predictable and for which no one was prepared in all European countries”.
“We have to create mechanisms for unforeseen situations and for people to come into the system, namely informal workers”, he justified.
In her brief speech, Ana Mendes Godinho referred indirectly to the issue surrounding complaints due to delays in the payment of support to people and companies by the Social Security, contrasting that “there was a great capacity of the social protection system in the response at a time of unique and extraordinary crisis ”.
“There was a great capacity to identify new mechanisms to reach those outside the system”, he maintained.
In her speech, Ana Mendes Godinho also considered that Social Security workers “have made it impossible to ensure that, in a month and a half, over 780 thousand people and about 98 thousand companies are paid under extraordinary measures of combating covid-19 ”.
“There was 24-hour work and seven days a week. I have been following your collective effort. There was a great capacity for reinvention, namely in the simplified ‘lay-off’ processes, in which applications were accepted in 16 days ”, he said.
Also according to the minister, the public social protection system “showed that, when necessary, it responded to those who needed it with concrete measures aimed at the situations of companies and people”.
“As part of the simplified ‘lay-off’, it has already paid more than 65 thousand companies that submitted the order during the month of April. On May 8, payments not yet made for April family support will be made. Regarding the ‘lay-offs’ that entered until the end of April, they are in a position to be paid by May 15th, ”reiterated the Minister of Labor.
Ana Mendes Godinho also defended that, on the part of the services she supervises, there was “capacity to identify new mechanisms to reach those who were outside the system and were totally unprotected”.
“We are constantly concerned with creating new measures, adjusting them, to reach as many people as possible and to those who are unprotected,” he added.
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