The amounts were disclosed to Lusa by the president of the LPB following a meeting with the Ministry of Health and the National Institute of Medical Emergency (INEM) regarding the settlement of patient transport services provided in recent months by the fire brigades, within the pre-hospital system managed by the institute.
The meeting occurred after the league demanded on Saturday that the debts for the pre-hospital emergency service from the last few months be paid by today, threatening to suspend, next Friday, patient transport with INEM ambulances.
According to António Nunes, INEM transferred six million euros to the fire brigades today, adding to the 3.7 million that had already been paid on Tuesday, but 3.7 million euros are still outstanding.
“What we concluded is that the money exists, but there is some difficulty for these funds to enter INEM’s budget so they can be transferred to the fire brigades,” the league leader explained, emphasizing it involves administrative processes.
In light of this, the LBP aims to secure assurance in the coming hours that the remaining funds owed to the fire brigades will be paid by the end of this month.
“We are waiting for the minister or INEM to confirm that they can pay by the end of next week. If they do not, on Friday we will proceed with our protest to draw public attention to the firefighters’ difficulties,” because they are incurring advance expenses for this service, Antonio Nunes stressed.
The LBP president also acknowledged that INEM “made an effort this week” by transferring the 9.7 million euros to the firefighter associations and assured that public rescue services will not be compromised if the protest goes ahead on Friday.
In practice, the fire brigades intend to respond to INEM pre-hospital emergency calls with their own ambulances rather than those of the institute, which will result in a cost increase for the State of “more or less double.”
The fire brigades, which transport around 1.2 million patients annually by INEM’s call, are among the entities that make up the Integrated Medical Emergency System (SIEM), coordinated by the institute.
