Despite the dramatic reduction in personnel, Mayor Sebastião Melo refused to hire 443 employees. The Municipal Finance Department had authorized these vacancies to open in 2022, but the procedure was interrupted last year by decision of the mayor.
Privatization plan
The contradiction is that a public company does not seek profit, but to serve the population. The statement was made by Edson Zomar, director of Simpa (Union of Municipalities of Porto Alegre).
The service concept does not provide for profit. On the contrary, they want to privatize and it becomes easier if there is justification for inefficiency.
Edson Zomar, director of Simpa
The union leader accuses the city hall of scrapping DMAE to sell it. Zomar declared to the UOL that the lack of maintenance and new investments is thought to make the population consider the department ineffective and accept privatization.
The director of Simpa said that the first step towards precariousness was to reduce the number of employees. Zomar stated that DMAE has half of the necessary servers. With fewer employees, it becomes difficult to maintain the quality of services, and problems begin to appear.
