Minimum Wage In Focus As Portugal Heads To Polls

Like nearly one in four workers in Portugal, Fernanda Moreira, a food services worker at a hospital in a Lisbon suburb, earns the minimum wage

Lisbon, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 27th Jan, 2022 ) :Like nearly one in four workers in Portugal, Fernanda Moreira, a food services worker at a hospital in a Lisbon suburb, earns the minimum wage.

"We don't live, we survive," said the 40-year-old mother of a 12-year-old boy whose husband earns just a bit more than her.

"We learn to live with the essentials. It is frustrating and sad." Portugal's large and growing pool of workers like Moreira who earn the minimum wage -- and the incumbent Socialist party's plans to raise it further -- is a key issue in Sunday's snap election.

Nearly 900,000 workers in Portugal earn the minimum wage, which was raised this year by 47 Euros to 822 euros ($927) per month, still one of the lowest in western Europe.

Their numbers have doubled over the past decade, according to a study by economist Eugenio Rosa, who warns Portugal "is becoming a nation of minimum wages." Prime Minister Antonio Costa has vowed to raise the minimum wage above 1,000 euros a month by 2026 if he is re-elected. It stood at 589 euros when he took office in 2015.

"It is even possible to go beyond that," Costa said Monday during a radio interview.

But the two hard-left parties that have propped up his minority government have slammed the proposed increase as too little while the main opposition centre-right PSD party argues it goes too far.