Lula government will hold public tender for Funai – 06/04/2023 – Daily life

The government plans to open a public tender for employees of Funai (National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples), something that last happened in 2016.

A Sheet had access to a document from the folder, in which Minister Sônia Guajajara authorizes measures aimed at selecting new servants for the agency’s staff. According to members of the government, the measure is already aligned internally and should receive the endorsement of the Ministry of Management.

“I opportunely bring to the fore the importance of creating the Indigenous Career Plan and the Funai Special Job Plan in conjunction with holding a competition”, says the minister.

The official announcement of the contest could happen at the mark of one hundred days of government, next Monday (10), when Lula is expected to reveal new measures of his administration.

As for the career plan, a claim made by Funai employees —who have already organized events in front of the foundation’s headquarters—, should remain at the forefront.

As shown to Sheetthe Bolsonaro government denied holding new public tenders for Funai and caused the body to reach its lowest staff since 2008.

The lack of manpower makes it difficult to inspect and combat illegal actions and field work in indigenous lands. It also reduces the security of the servers’ work, often leaving them at risk.

The shortage of employees is pointed out by indigenous people and indigenists, heard on condition of anonymity, as one of the difficulties for protection actions to expand to other indigenous lands, in addition to the Yanomami, with the same intensity as the operation in Roraima.

The panorama is similar according to reports heard by officials, for example, from Ibama (Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) and the Federal Police.

Since its organizational restructuring in 2009, Funai has had only two civil service exams approved by the federal government, one in 2010 and another in 2016. This led to a drop in the number of permanent employees.

In 2022, more than 600 employees were hired on a temporary basis —all for the Amazon—, which made the body’s workforce grow for the first time in eight years.

The hiring, however, responds to a determination by the Justice to act on the sanitary barriers created to control the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on indigenous peoples.

In the official letter, Guajajara even states that hiring new employees for the body is essential for compliance with ADPF (Arguição de Descumprimento de Preceito Fundamental) 709, in which the minister of the STF (Supreme Federal Court) Luís Roberto Barroso determined that the government federal government to expel illegal miners from seven indigenous lands, including the Yanomami.

According to the document, Funai currently has almost 2,500 employees, but only 1,400 are effective. There are, on the other hand, more than 2,200 vacant positions in the foundation.

“The recomposition of the foundation’s workforce, through a public tender, is essential for fulfilling the federal government’s mission to protect and promote the rights of indigenous peoples in Brazil”, says Guajajara.

The document also emphasizes the importance of creating a career plan for Funai employees, something that has been claimed by the INA (Associated Indigenists), an entity that brings together indigenists from the agency.

According to the minister, the career plan would serve to solve a series of problems faced by the foundation’s employees, such as “low pay”, “lack of incentives to compensate for adverse work situations”, “lack of incentives for servants to seek a specific qualification in the indigenous area” and the “high evasion rate of civil servants, especially those who have just joined”.

According to the folder, between 2004 and 2016, 87% of civil servants who left the agency did so under the justification of either “dismissal upon request”, when the employee himself asks to leave, or “tenure in another non-accumulative position”, when he gets another role.

“Therefore, public tenders alone cannot solve Funai’s serious functional situation”, concludes the minister.

The Bolsonaro administration denied two requests for tenders made by the foundation (in 2019 and 2020).

In the first, the government’s justification was that the “guidelines of the Federal Executive Power point to the impossibility of authorizing new public tenders in view of the country’s current fiscal situation”.

Funai officials heard on condition of anonymity say that the lack of resources is today one of the biggest obstacles for the agency’s work, which even made the search operations more difficult for indigenist Bruno Pereira and journalist Dom Phillips, who disappeared in the Javari Valley. , in the Amazon.

Due to its work in the region, Funai was one of the first entities to set up search teams in the area, already on the second day of the disappearance, with groups composed of indigenous peoples from the Kanamari and Matis peoples.

Bruno Pereira was a licensed employee of the foundation. He served in the general coordination of the region before being transferred to the coordination of isolated peoples, in Brasília.

He asked for leave from Funai in 2019, after being exonerated after 14 months in office. Among other reasons, the decision was taken because he was finding it difficult to do the job he thought was right, according to people who knew him.

The indigenist is a portrait of how the situation of insecurity was latent for those who worked in the region, with recurrent threats from fishermen — one of them even confessed to having participated in the murder of Pereira and Dom.