The mayors of Vila Real de Santo António and Castro Marim voiced their criticism today of the successive postponements by government of the project to dredge the Guadiana river between Spain and Portugal to allow larger craft to navigate the river, bringing much needed tourist income to this once busy area.
This work has been promised for years with zero action by successive governments.
The Chairman of the Committee for Coordination and Regional Development (CCDR) Algarve, David Santos has outlined the excellent development potential of the Lower Guadiana area and said that environmental concerns over the dredging work have been countered and exceeded.
Still nothing happens as the project team waits for an ‘opinion’ from yet another official body, this time it is the turn of an international commission of the Portuguese-Spanish border area – this process is endless and assertions last Spring that work was about to start can be added to decades of broken promises.
The mayor of VRSA, Luís Gomes and the mayor of Castro Marim, Francisco Amaral are highly critical of the delays, saying that what is needed is some dredging, not more promises.
"I think it is a shame what is happening. This dredging should have been done 20 years ago, and it was 20 years ago that I heard the dredging was imminent. The Government and the CCDR need to stop saying what they will do, and actually do something," said Francisco Amaral.
The newly elected Mayor of Castro Marim feels the people have been tricked for long enough, "I'm tired of being deceived, I and the inhabitants of the Lower Guadiana," adding that a previous excuse “was the lack of an agreement with Spain, now it’s the economic crisis that is being blamed for the lack of action.”
The newly elected mayor of Alcoutim, Osvaldo Gonçalves, welcomed the possibility of the work now going ahead as this is a long standing issue for locals as the dredging will provide "an improvement in safety and navigation for many pleasure craft coming up the river,” many of which can not reach the historic riverside towns and villages due to 30 years of silting.
