Senate wants to create 5 new municipalities in the surrounding area.

Brazil Agency The Federal District Planning Company (Codeplan) presented last week a study on the potential impacts of creating five municipalities around the capital. This is based on Complementary Law Project (PLC) 416/2008, which deals with the creation of municipalities.

In the area surrounding the Federal District, five municipalities in Goiás have districts and urban centers that meet the criteria established by the project: Jardim Ingá, in Luziânia; Campos Lindos, in Cristalina; Jardim ABC, in Cidade Ocidental; Morro Alto, in Padre Bernardo; and Girassol, in Cocalzinho de Goiás.

Approved in the Senate, PLC 416, authored by Senator Mozarildo Cavalcanti (PTB-RR), allows for the creation of 400 municipalities in the country and has been sent to the Chamber of Deputies for deliberation.

According to a study by Codeplan, based on the conditions established by the project, municipal associations estimate that the minimum population required to create municipalities in the Central-West Region is 6 inhabitants, a number far exceeded by the five areas in Goiás.

The project also requires a request to the Legislative Assembly, signed by 20% of the voters in the directly affected geographic region, and a study proving the economic-financial, political-administrative, socio-environmental, and urban viability of the chosen districts and centers.

“For a long time, relations between the Federal District and the surrounding region were conflictive, but now the government wants to transform these relations into a partnership,” said the president of Codeplan, Julio Miragaia, when presenting the study. According to Miragaia, the local government has been adopting measures in this direction, with the signing of agreements and other actions to benefit the region.

According to him, the creation of the five municipalities foreseen in the study will not produce changes in the situation of these areas in relation to the Federal District, since they already have a very high level of integration with the capital, as a large part of their residents work in Brasília and use its services regularly, such as the hospital network and public transportation.

The Deputy Secretary for Development of the Metropolitan Region of the Federal District, Arquicelso Bites, also highlighted the interest in working in partnership with the government of Goiás, since "a rivalry with the surrounding region is not in our interest." Bites emphasized that this policy is based on the reality that the region is the main supplier of labor to Brasília, with 30% to 40% of residents living in the surrounding cities.

The Codeplan study concludes that the creation of the five municipalities, "in itself, will not resolve the strong asymmetry observed with the metropolitan core, but for these five consolidated districts or urban centers, emancipation could represent the mitigation of a wide range of problems, in particular the precarious access to public services."

The analysis also reveals that the districts of Jardim Ingá and Campos Lindos have very favorable conditions for emancipation, as they are localities with significant economic activities, especially in the tertiary sector in the former and the agro-industrial sector in the latter. The study highlights that the urban centers of Monte Alto, Jardim ABC, and Girassol "are still essentially dormitory towns of the Federal District, with minimal economic activity, and would depend primarily on the transfer of federal and state resources."

Jorge Wamburg
Reporter from Agência Brasil