As the nation’s schools clamour for building work to remove life-threatening asbestos, 120 pupils turned up in parliament last week, offering MPs asbestos keyrings. The symbolic protest was called by the president of the parents’ association of the schools of Vieira de Araújo, in Vieira do Minho, Paulo Magalhães.
He said: “If our pupils have to work under 4,500 square metres of asbestos every day, it won’t do any harm for our MPs to have a piece of it in their pockets.”
The parents’ association is battling with the education ministry for the removal of the school’s asbestos roofing panels, but so far “only a few have been dealt with”.
“On top of those that existed, they put other asbestos panels. The old one’s leaked, and the second ones are going the same way,” teacher Joaquim Costa told Correio da Manhã.
Meanwhile, education minister Nuno Crato has been pressed to come clean over the number of schools operating with the threat of onsite asbestos.
Teachers’ union Fenprof is fighting the issue through the courts and taking it to the European parliament.
Asbestos has been banned in Europe since 2005, but Portugal is one of a number of countries with acres of asbestos roof panels still in place on government and other buildings.
Recently, civil servant deaths through cancer hit the headlines, with unions and family members demanding government intervention on the grounds of public safety.
