The president of the CTT executive committee, João Bento, today blamed air transport between the continent and the Azores for 25% of the days of the year being “deeply below capacity” contracted in terms of mail dispatch.
João Bento states that, in “25% of the days of the year, there was no capacity contracted with the airlines”, and this “difficulty was greatly aggravated by recent SATA decisions” related to the “change in the number of flights” and “service times” to dispatch CTT cargo.
The CTT manager was heard today at the headquarters of the parliamentary committee on Infrastructure, Mobility and Housing of the Assembly of the Republic, at the request of PSD deputy Paulo Moniz, elected by the Azores constituency.
João Bento pointed out that there is “less capacity” than what is contracted in terms of public service provided by CTT.
For the person responsible, there are “structural restrictions that cannot be overcome if the issue of air cargo is not resolved”, and “the main problem at the moment is called SATA”.
João Bento argued that since “the allocation for the public postal service is zero”, “it would be interesting to guarantee its operation in the market through the State Budget or the Regional Government”.
The administrator argued that “a dedicated plane was a solution” to ensure quality service to the Azores, which could be shared and would improve competition.
The official reiterated the need for the State to pay for services “to address territorial cohesion issues”.
The deputy responsible for hearing the CTT manager, the social democrat Paulo Moniz, considered that it is “extremely important to know the levels of service provided [pelos CTT] for each group of islands”, aiming to “understand the differences that remain”.
“I feel a lowering of arms from those who view the issue with a certain fatalism”, stated Paulo Moniz, arguing that “solutions must appear”, with a view to improving the service provided by CTT.
Deputy Ana Martins (Chega) considered that the service provided is “far below quality levels”, which is “unacceptable in a rule of law”.
The parliamentarian elected by the Azores declared that the “closing of several stations” and reduction in human resources” do not contribute to the quality of the service provided and that the Azoreans are being treated as “second-quality Portuguese”.
According to the parliamentarian, the State “has the obligation to guarantee supervision” of service provision by CTT.
The socialist Francisco César considered, in turn, that “the service [dos CTT] is not good”, being provided by SATA because it made itself available for this purpose, despite there being other airline operators on the market.
He pointed out examples of delays from the mainland to the Azores and between islands, of 15 to 20 days, which makes Azoreans feel like “second-class citizens”, and also highlighted the delays “with queues” of up to three hours in accessing CTT stations, which becomes more acute when it comes to collecting social benefits.
Francisco César reinforced that when there is a collision with the payment of the social mobility subsidy “it is total chaos” in the service provided by CTT.