On the eve of the discussion of the government program, Miguel Albuquerque has not yet put forward a scenario of early elections, if the document is rejected. However, if the Region has to go ahead with new elections, the governor has not said whether he will run again.
“This scenario [of early elections] is not on the table now, it can only be considered after Thursday”, he told reporters. And, as to whether, in this scenario, he would run again, Miguel Albuquerque simply replied: “we will make the decisions later”. Before that, Miguel Albuquerque once again defended the importance of the program and the budget being approved, because the Region cannot be left without a budget, “which would be very harmful” for companies and families. The president of the regional government was speaking to the media during his visit this morning to the work underway on Caminho dos Pretos, with the creation of a fire-break zone to protect the city of Funchal and its population and their property.
Located upstream from the city of Funchal, the project aims to create a buffer zone of low-combustibility vegetation, against which fires are extinguished or reduced in intensity, facilitating fire-fighting, reducing the degree of vulnerability of the population of Funchal to forest fires and providing the area with resources that facilitate the work of the Fire Brigades.
The firebreak strip covers an area of 648 hectares, “most of which is private and without any forest management, which makes it a frequent scene of forest fires that, in the recent past, even reached the urban perimeter with human victims to be lamented”.
This is, the government states in the note sent to the media, one of the measures “in the set of solutions that the Madeiran Executive has been implementing with a view to safeguarding the forest and also the safety of people and property, which help to counter the tendency for large fires to occur in the RAM when unfavorable weather conditions occur”.