After fire, inns affiliated with Porto Alegre city hall are inspected

This Monday (29), Porto Alegre City Hall begins inspecting inns that have agreements with the city hall to welcome people in vulnerable situations. The initiative comes after ten people died in a fire that occurred in the early hours of Friday (26).

The details of the inspection operation were agreed at a meeting held last Saturday (27), with the participation of secretariats and Health Surveillance. The task force will be coordinated by representatives of the Municipal Department of Social Development.

The teams will primarily visit the Pousada Garoa units, which have had contracts with the city since 2020. In total, 22 locations must be inspected.

On Friday, the city of Porto Alegre ordered the opening of a Preliminary Summary Investigation (IPS) to investigate the facts surrounding the service provision contract with Pousada Garoa.

Hiring of Pousada Garoa

Porto Alegre city hall has already signed seven contracts with Pousada Garoa. In total, they total R$ 9,199,028.46.

The current contract between the city hall and Pousada Garoa – the only one that is still in force – is worth R$2,705,379.96. It was signed in December 2023 and expires in December this year.

The current contract is the extension of another contract, signed in December 2022 and which expired in December last year, and which had a value of R$3,186,000. This contract determined that the inn would provide 450 places per month.

Fire in inn

A fire in one of the units at Pousada Garoa, in the central region of Porto Alegre, left ten people dead in the early hours of last Friday.

According to the Fire Department, the place did not have a permit or license to operate. The fire started around 2 am, and was controlled by agents at 4:30 am.

The Social Assistance and Citizenship Foundation says that there were 30 people in the building that caught fire, 16 of which were homeless people covered by the municipal program.

(with information from Fábio Munhoz)