The Ombudsman received several complaints from workers whose functions are incompatible with the teleworking regime and are forced to miss work to provide support to the elderly who are part of their household and depend on their permanent support, especially in the face of the recent closure of social responses in which they were integrated (day centers and homes).
The problem was identified at the Office of the Prime Minister, with which the Ombudsman has been in constant coordination, in the current state of emergency.
It was announced today that the Council of Ministers approved “the decree-law that creates an exceptional and temporary regime of justified absences motivated by assistance to the family, reinforcing the measures already taken, to improve their adaptation to reality, and starting to take care of situations in which there is a need for assistance to a relative in the straight ascending line who is in charge of the worker and who frequents social facilities whose activity is suspended.”
Source: Office of the Provedor de Justiça, Portugal