Bolsonaro Vetoes Bill Providing Indigenous with Drinking Water, Hygiene, Hospital Beds

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – President Jair Bolsonaro vetoed a bill addressing social protection measures to prevent contagion and the spread of Covid-19 in indigenous territories.

Among the vetoes published in the Federal Gazette on Wednesday, July 8th, are the government’s obligation to provide indigenous people with drinking water, hygiene, and hospital beds.

The text, which points out that indigenous peoples, quilombolas (Afro-Brazilian residents of quilombo settlements), and traditional peoples are “groups in extreme situations of vulnerability“, was passed in the Senate on June 16th. As it had already been passed by the Chamber, it had since been on Bolsonaro’s desk awaiting his signature.

The President vetoed 14 sections of the law after hearing the Ministries of Health, Justice, Economy, and Women, Family, and Human Rights, according to the order published in the early hours of Wednesday. The presidential vetoes will still be examined by Congress, which decides whether to maintain or override them.

Bolsonaro says that, due to opposition to the public interest and unconstitutionality, he decided to partially veto the bill that deals with social protection measures to prevent contagion and the spread of the coronavirus in indigenous territories, creates the emergency plan to fight Covid-19 in these areas, establishes support measures for quilombola communities, artisanal fishers, and other traditional peoples and communities to fight the disease, and amends a 1980 law to ensure the contribution of additional funds in emergency situations and public calamity.

Likewise excluded was the government’s obligation to ensure universal access to drinking water; free distribution of hygiene, cleaning and surface disinfection materials to villages or indigenous communities, whether officially recognized or not, including in the urban context; emergency supply of hospital beds and intensive care units (ICU), as well as the purchase or availability of ventilators and blood oxygenation machines.

The list of vetoes also includes sections that provided that the federal government should immediately allocate emergency funds to prioritize indigenous health as a result of the public health emergency caused by the pandemic.

A sub-paragraph of this vetoed article also provided that the costs of the emergency plan to tackle Covid-19 in indigenous territories would be borne by the federal government, through the creation of extraordinary credits. The paragraph stating that the federal government would transfer funds to states and municipalities for financial support to the emergency plan was also vetoed.

The section in which the federal government would establish a specific financing mechanism for states and municipalities whenever there would be a need for secondary and tertiary attention outside the indigenous territories, was also excluded.

The partially vetoed text also provided that in emergency situations and public calamity, the government should ensure additional resources unforeseen in the health plans of the Indigenous Special Sanitary Districts (DSEIS) to the Indigenous Health Care Subsystem, as well as ensuring the inclusion of indigenous peoples in emergency plans for the care of critically ill patients in the municipal and state health secretariats.

The sections that established the preparation and distribution, with the involvement of indigenous peoples or their institutions, of information materials on the symptoms of Covid-19, the supply of Internet points in the villages or communities in order to enable access to information and avoid the displacement of indigenous people to urban centers were also vetoed.

The distribution by the federal government of basic food baskets, seeds and agricultural tools directly to indigenous families, quilombolas, artisanal fishermen, and other traditional peoples and communities; the creation of a specific credit program for indigenous peoples and quilombolas for the 2020 Crop Plan; the inclusion of quilombola communities certified by the Palmares Cultural Foundation as beneficiaries of the National Agrarian Reform Program (PNRA), ensuring the registration of families in the list of beneficiaries for access to public policies, have also been vetoed.

The preparation, within ten days, of contingency plans for contact situations for each confirmed record of isolated indigenous peoples officially recognized by FUNAI and contingency plans for specific outbreaks and epidemics for each people of recent contact, were also excluded.

The bill also provided that, in remote areas, the federal government would adopt mechanisms to ease access to emergency assistance and social and welfare benefits, so that indigenous peoples, quilombolas, fishermen, and other traditional peoples would not have to leave their communities.

Most of the vetoes are justified by the argument that the text created obligatory expenses without demonstrating the “respective budgetary and financial impact, which would be unconstitutional”.

Source: Folha de S.Paulo