Page 19 - Pascal Smet News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

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 the Brussels work consultancy bureau Moore. They studied internal documents, surveyed more than 450 m...

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 and usually welcomes nearly 1.5 million visitors. "We all have memories of fairs, big and small,” sa...

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 open. According to reports, the Commission will begin the consolidation of its operations as early as ...

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 October in prisons in Brussels and elsewhere. "There are significant recruitment problems, and the offic...

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 construction work to create it will be extensive. The tunnel begins at Place Solvay, almost immediately in fr...