Page 10 - Pascal Smet News Today

Working 16:50 05/05/2021 Nearly two-thirds of women have experienced misogyny and the same number have experienced racism working as a firefighter in Brussels. The figures come from an extensive audit carried out within the department. State secretary Pascal Smet (one.brussels), responsible for emergency medical and fire services in the capital, launched the independent investigation last year following well-publicised incidents of racist abuse within the brigade. The audit was carried out by t...

Culture 05:50 The culture of fairgrounds and fairs has been recognised as a part of Brussels heritage, the capital region’s secretary of state Pascal Smet announced on Monday. By awarding this distinction, it opens up the possibility of the capital’s fairgrounds and fairs being recognised by Unesco. Around 40 fairs are organised throughout the Brussels-Capital Region and its 19 municipalities. Each has its own history, but the most significant is the Midi fair, which lasts for five weeks an...

Working 09:05 The European Commission says it wants to halve the number of buildings it manages in Brussels by 2030, from 50 to 25. The buildings they intend to stop using are mainly those outside the European quarter. The plan appears to be to concentrate operations on and around Rue de la Loi, and in the area close to Parc du Cinquantenaire while abandoning existing Commission locations at Geneva, Beaulieu and Champ de Mars.  The non-EU quarter location at Place Charles Rogier will remain op...

Working 06:05 A joint union strike action notice has been filed for the prisons of Forest, Saint-Gilles and Berkendael, Grégory Wallez, federal secretary of the CGSP Prison union, has announced. The reason for the planned strike is the lack of new prison staff, a dearth in numbers which is putting increased working pressures on those in the service. The strike will begin on Thursday at 22.00 and will last for a period of 24 hours. Several strikes over understaffing already took place last Octo...

Transport 06:03 Beliris, the agency for cooperation between Brussels and the federal government, will soon start digging a tunnel under Brussels North station, which will be the first step in creating the new metro line to Bordet. The new section of line, which will be 4.3 km long and will form part of the Metro 3 North-South project, will take passengers from Bordet in Evere to De Brouckère in the city centre in 10 minutes. While the tunnel under the station will be quite short, the construct...

Moving 17:43 11/03/2021 Pascal Smet, state secretary for urban development in the Brussels government, wants to rework regulations to require new houses and flats to include a garden or terrace in the building plan. This is one of the changes he would like to see made to the draft document on development reform. The building code has not been adapted since 2007, so it’s about time. The project has been on the table since the previous government, but now Smet (One.Brussels) wants parliament to...

Transport 18:59 05/03/2021 Duelling demonstrations involving around 800 Uber vehicles and 120 taxis caused serious traffic jams on Thursday in central Brussels. At issue was the decision of the Brussels government announced by minister-president Rudi Vervoort to apply strictly the 1995 Brussels ordinance on taxi services and car rental companies with drivers. This stipulates that private hire-car companies, and therefore Uber drivers who circulate under this status, cannot use radio communicati...

Belgium 09:39 04/03/2021 A Brussels firefighter has been demoted after responding with a racist comment to a colleagues Facebook post late last year in relation to deaths from Covid-19 in communes with a high-density of immigrants. In October, a member of the Brussels ‎Fire and Emergency Medical Aid Service‎ (Siamu) published a post on his Facebook page, in relation to the figures of the Covid-19 pandemic which read: "Still bizarre that the three municipalities with the most positive cases ...

The old lifts that are still found in many buildings in Brussels can be considered part of the architectural heritage of the Brussels region, according to the city’s secretary of state for urbanism and heritage.

The old lifts that are still found in many buildings in Brussels can be considered part of the architectural heritage of the Brussels region, according to the city’s secretary of state for urbanism and heritage.