The decision was announced by the leaders of the three organizations that called for the suspension of services, Manuel Faustino, from the Luanda Taxi Drivers Association (ATL), Francisco Patient, from the Nova Aliança dos Taxistas de Angola Association (ANATA), and Rafael Inácio, from the Association of the Taxi Drivers of Angola (ATA).
According to Francisco Patient, taxi drivers are being persecuted during the stoppage, namely all the secretaries of the associations, with more than 100 people arrested and taken to summary judgment.
"We appeal to the general command of the National Police to carry out its work in strict compliance with the law", said Patient, also noting that "people are being hunted at the respective taxi signs [places of concentration] and being forced to work ".
The association leader also informed that taxi drivers who refused to work on Monday and today "are arrested, attacked and threatened with death", to force them to return to activity.
"The police are an institution of the Angolan State, which must prioritize their work under the terms of the law and none of them have so far been arrested under an arrest warrant, they are just being chased away, detained, made animals," he said.
The president of ANATA stressed that the only objective of the strike is economic and social claims of the associates, demarcating and condemning once again the incidents that took place on Monday, in the Benfica area, which caused material damage.
"We guided more than 40,000 taxi drivers, divided into 'staffs', fleets and singles, to carry out a peaceful stoppage, without aggression to those who did not join, and that is what happened yesterday on the first day of the stoppage", he indicated, regretting the position of some public media, who "did a terrible job", informing that there would be no strike.
The association leader revealed that, as a result of information from public bodies, people took to the street counting on the services, facing the lack of taxis.
"Because the mechanisms we used to summon the taxi drivers were not the public media, which have closed their doors to associations for some time," he said.
"This gross lie by some media was what caused that situation of people supposedly annoyed by the lack of taxi and, with some benefit from whom we don't know, they were the protagonists of the incidents we heard in Benfica", he added.
In view of the concern and interest of the governor of the province of Luanda in dialoguing with the associations, Francisco Patient continued, the strike is suspended, "to make room for dialogue", which could take place today or Wednesday, taking into account that " perhaps she was deceived when she was informed that they had spoken with the leaders of the associations".
"Looking at the number of detainees so far and the promises and threats that we are receiving from some law enforcement officers and the way in which they attack our colleagues from public roads and taxi plates, we may again schedule a new strike in the coming days. , but we will give way to dialogue from today", he underlined.
In turn, Rafael Inácio believes that things will go well and that the associates "who carried out the strike peacefully" can be released.
The ATA leader explained that many associates were detained for refusing to carry passengers, stating that "taxi drivers are being hunted at home, the target of threats and constant calls".
The continuation of these arrests, Francisco Patient said, could be a reason for a new stoppage.
"Because taxi drivers will not accept hearing that a certain leader is detained without an arrest warrant, without any procedure that the law allows for detention", pointed out Patient, denouncing that on Monday many of his colleagues "were very mistreated, barbarously beaten".
"I was until 23:00 yesterday [Monday] at Américo Boavida Hospital, where one of the ANATA secretaries was barefoot, in a chair handcuffed and taking the serum, without the right to water or soup that the family wanted to give him and this The patient is now in the Dona Ana Joaquina Court, so what we are verifying has nothing to do with a democratic rule of law, we hope that this will be corrected so that it does not reach the more than 40,000 taxi drivers in Luanda alone and throughout the country. ", he reinforced.
Manuel Faustino, on the other hand, said that the strike decision is not just about the issue of capacity (previously limited to 30 percent of capacity due to the covid-19 pandemic and which, according to the Government, has gone back to 100 percent), as it was made to believe, but with claims that have been dragging on for some years.
According to the president of the ATL, the claim book has seven points and only the one for capacity was answered and negotiated with people outside the associations, who were treated as "impostors".
"We hoped that these three [associations] would also be called to any position of the Government, in fact, the sensitivity that we all have is joint and unanimous. own people, we would lift the stoppage, the unfortunate thing was to have called individuals who have nothing and know and barely knew how to explain the reasons", said Faustino.
Apart from the issue of capacity, the ATL leader considered it more urgent to resolve the relationship between taxi drivers and police, characterized by the "lack of respect" by the authorities.
"Our taxi drivers want concrete actions and what happens is that they politicize things a lot. [This] makes our taxi drivers sad, angry, upset. We have taxi drivers who have been in the business for over 25 years and are directly excluded, it is neither had nor found", stressed Rafael Inácio, regretting the exclusion of taxi drivers from public policies of the State and not materializing the professionalization of the activity.
