Government House has intervened in the plight of local Portuguese nationals who have effectively become stuck in Bermuda because the Portuguese consulate closed without notice.

Antonio Fagundo, father of the lone clerk, Celesia Fagundo, who ran the local office, told The Royal Gazette that his daughter closed the office and went on holiday last Tuesday.

The problem is that she did so without any public notice and many Portuguese who have planned to travel are now left without their documents.

Mr. Fagundo said that under the arrangement with Lisbon someone would come down and shadow his daughter for a few days before she left, enabling the office to remain open. But he said the replacement never came and his daughter left. Before leaving, he said that she had placed a notice on the door of the office with the name and number of the person to contact in Lisbon if any problems arose.

"Someone took that notice down," Mr. Fagundo said, " and it's not fair because now no one knows who to call."

He said his daughter called him from her holiday and asked him to check that the notice was still up. "But when I got there I saw someone had torn it down," he said.

He admitted that she had not left a back-up copy of the notice with him, nor had she taken the information on her holiday and she could not remember it.

The office closure has proved more than an inconvenience to several Portuguese in Bermuda. Cathy Pacheco told The Royal Gazette that her in-laws stand to lose thousands of dollars as they do not have their passports to take a planned cruise. And travel associate Joe Amaral of C Travel last Thursday confirmed that he had over 20 clients affected.

The travel agency faxed letters to the Lisbon ministry responsible last Thursday but yesterday said it had had no response. The Royal Gazette called the minister's office in Lisbon yesterday and was told that he was in Brussels. When asked when he would return and if he was aware of the problem, the respondent abruptly hung up.

The issue has become a major talking point in the Portuguese community with much of the discussion at the weekend Portuguese festival centred around it. In fact it is believed that those discussions led to a misunderstanding which resulted in about 20 people waiting outside the consulate office at 7.30 a.m. on Monday. Cathy Pacheco said that her mother-in-law was among those who waited as they had received an e-mail telling them that someone was coming to man the office from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.

"She waited until 11 a.m. and no one came," Mrs. Pacheco said, "things are worse than ever."

Deputy Governor Nick Carter last night confirmed that Government House had been contacted about the problem and was doing its best to help.