New places for police and firefighters announced

The gov­ern­ment yes­ter­day ap­proved the im­me­di­ate cre­ation of 750 places for new Mossos d’Es­quadra po­lice of­fi­cers and 250 places for fire­fight­ers. Yet, the an­nounce­ment did not stop mem­bers of both forces from con­tin­u­ing their protests.

In fact, in­te­rior min­is­ter, Miquel Buch, re­quired an es­cort in leav­ing his of­fice in the face of a protest by some 200 Mossos po­lice of­fi­cers, who had gath­ered out­side the in­te­rior de­part­ment to protest the lack of progress in the talks about their work­ing con­di­tions.

Buch an­nounced the new places in a press con­fer­ence, say­ing the re­cruit­ment drive would be paid for out of an emer­gency fund in the 2018 bud­get. Ac­cord­ing to Buch, the whole gov­ern­ment had made an “ef­fort” to re­cover places through re­tire­ments “to pre­vent them ac­cu­mu­lat­ing” in the se­cu­rity and emer­gency ser­vices. Buch also said that one of his aims is to in­crease the num­ber of women in the po­lice force, which stands at 20%.

On this week’s protests, which pre­vented him from leav­ing his of­fice for hours, Buch said it was due to a “com­plaint” from the unions, which he said al­ready knew his de­part­ment could not pro­vide “any so­lu­tion” to their call for po­lice salaries to match those of fire­fight­ers be­cause they are wait­ing for the green light from the trea­sury. a