The PSD wants the Government to review the legal framework in order to protect certain regions most sought after by motorhome tourists visiting the region, such as the Algarve’s Costa Vicentina and Southwest Alentejo.
In an open letter that was sent out this Wednesday, May 27, addressed to the Secretary of State for Tourism, a group of PSD MPs warn of the “wild motorhome activity” that “proliferates throughout the country, more expressively in the Costa Vicentina and Southwest Alentejo Coast”.
“There is a multiplication of mobile homes, often not complying with rules of civility, violating spaces of great environmental fragility, polluting beaches and cliffs, in a disorderly penalization for the country, more markedly in the mentioned locatons. It is important to take the appropriate measures, be it from the point of view of revising the legislation and paying fines in the event of administrative offenses, strengthening enforcement, and increasing signage, in order to protect the landscape, tourism and ecological interest”, they assert.
“Are you going to review the regime for administrative offenses? Are you going to order inspection actions?” ask the MPs. The deputies also highlight the contribution of tourism to the "Portuguese economy in terms of revenue, but also of job creation", stating that there is a bounty of untapped economic potential that is dodged by the activity of the aforementioned “wild motorhome tourists”.
“The country does not need, much less desires, a tourism that violates its natural heritage and constituted itself as a gallery of horrors so far, such as those that the local populations often have to witness, which was sharpened in this period of COVID-19 and that cannot be perpetuated”, they say, referring to the irresponsible flocking of tourists and expats in caravans and motorhomes to park up on beaches and cliffs along the Algarve and Alentejo’s coast. This letter was endorsed by Algarve PSD MPs Cristóvão Norte, Ofélia Ramos and Rui Cristina.
Photo Credit to Bruno Filipe Pires of the Barlavento newspaper
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