With a six-month completion deadline, the contract has already been awarded to the company Armando & Fátima Empreiteiros Lda., which will also carry out wastewater and stormwater drainage work as part of the same project.

“We found 488 requests for service connections that had remained unfulfilled for several years,” says Mayor Jorge Ratola, as quoted in a municipal statement. “This situation directly disadvantaged residents, families, and developers wishing to build or invest in Espinho,” he adds.

Aiming to clear the accumulated backlog, the Social Democratic mayor has included this project in a “broader plan” for water and sanitation network upgrades and announced that a “second phase” of works is already being prepared to resolve the remaining “significant volume of pending cases.”

To accelerate the process, the municipality is also “notifying applicants of the option to have their connections installed by private companies holding public works licenses,” a move that would speed up the completion of these connections by distributing the work among more entities.

Since the designated companies will be required to comply with “the technical and administrative procedures defined by municipal departments,” the local authority believes that private contracting “will allow for reduced waiting times, streamlined processes, and the easier realisation of investments, while maintaining necessary technical control and municipal oversight.”

Jorge Ratola argues that, given that resolving this process is “a priority,” by enabling the use of “duly qualified private companies to carry out the service connections—always subject to municipal rules and oversight”—the local authority is facilitating the reorganisation of a service that is essential for citizens “and for the development of Espinho.”

With this in mind, he pledges: “We want to clear the backlog of pending cases attributable to the City Council, reduce waiting times, and provide a faster, more efficient service.”