The president of the Chamber of Deputies, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), said today (28) that he will guide, in the return of the legislative work, the proposal to create an emergency fund to be used in situations of natural catastrophes like the one to come happening in Bahia: “on the first day of February [quando voltarem os trabalhos] we are going to guide some changes in laws so that these cases, such as those in Bahia and other states, can have a faster service and no bureaucracy”.
The statement was made this Tuesday afternoon, after a meeting with the Bahia deputies’ bench to discuss Parliament’s aid to the state. “We are here analyzing what kind of measures we can take to propose to Brazil that we have a specific fund, which is included in the budget many times, and the first thing that comes out, because often we do not have the reality of when a catastrophe,” he said.
Lira said that this type of fund could be accessed in case of natural disasters, eliminating the need to use other measures, such as the edition of extraordinary credits and which also speeds up the transfer of resources. According to him, during the meeting with the Bahia bench to assess the situation of floods in the state, deputies asked for measures to be taken to reduce bureaucracy in the transfer of federal resources to regions affected by the rains.
“A claim by the Bahia bench, very united as always, is that this [envio de verba federal] be bureaucratized, so that this arrives as quickly as possible, so that the state of Bahia has its life of return to normality as urgently as possible,” he said.
The president of the Chamber also said that the focus, at this first moment, is to save lives and that the federal government has acted alongside the state government and city halls to provide assistance to victims: “we want to communicate that all assistance, in this first moment , which is to save lives, the state government, city halls, the federal government have made a huge effort. There are no reports of lack of assistance at this first moment, which is to save people’s lives, to accommodate, to feed, to treat”.
Lira also said that the second moment will be to survey the damage caused by the rains. “Now comes the second moment of surveying the damage, damage that the rains caused to roads, bridges, public buildings, housing, in order to help traders,” he said.
The president of the Chamber also commented on the provisional measure edited by the government federal, which opens an extraordinary credit of R$ 200 million in the Budget to recover highways damaged by rain in the Northeast, North and Southeast regions affected by heavy rains in recent days. According to him, the money is still a palliative and that the government must take other actions to help the states.
“We have information from the edition of a provisional measure today that should be, in our point of view, still a palliative for the scale of what happened in Bahia and that is also happening in other Brazilian states such as Piauí and Minas Gerais. We must also have other actions from the federal government that are already available, in the conversations we had to provide full assistance”, he said.
The coordinator of the Bahia bench, deputy Marcelo Nilo (PSB-BA) recalled the difficulties that the population is going through and said that Lira has pledged to help in the release of resources. Nilo also said that the bench is also debating the rearrangement of parliamentary amendments to help assist victims.
“President Lira promised us that efforts will not be lacking, not only with resources, because the federal government, the state government, will execute it, but everything that depends on the legislature will be attended to,” he said.
rains
So far, the number of people in Bahia affected by the rains is close to 500,000, especially residents of the southwest, south and extreme south of the state. On Monday (27), the state counted more than 31,405 homeless and 31,391 homeless, according to data sent by city halls and released by the Superintendence of Civil Defense and Protection (Sudec). The total number of affected municipalities reaches 116, 100 of which have already declared an emergency situation. At least 20 people died.
This Tuesday morning, the governor of Bahia, Rui Costa, said the state crosses “the greatest natural disaster in history”. At a press conference, Costa said that it is still not possible to say when the reconstruction of areas destroyed by the floods that hit the state this month will begin.
“Bahia is devastated and it is still not possible to stipulate when the roads will be repaired. We don’t know the extent. We will have to look, case by case, for the technical solution. In some places we will have to change the option. A bridge of 50 meters in width, for example, which was taken by the water, it can be a little bigger, with 70 meters, to facilitate the passage of the river”, he added.
