According to the governor of Luanda, Joana Lina, her portfolio is complying with all legal procedures for launching public tenders based on a model approved in December 2018, by the economic commission of the Council of Ministers.
For payment purposes, she explained, the modality will be restricted to the area actually cleaned and not to the weight of the waste deposited in the landfill, as it was being done.
Joana Lina was speaking at the opening of the first session of the community auscultation council, where the Strategy for the Implementation of the Solid Waste Management Model was presented in the capital.
The official suspended, at the end of last December, contracts with six cleaning and waste collection operators in Luanda, mainly due to the inability to settle the debt in kwanzas, indexed to the dollar.
As a consequence, the capital, with more than eight million inhabitants, is taken by the garbage that invades the neighborhoods, streets, markets with the residents to fear for health problems.
The governor of Luanda said, in her speech, that 20 days after taking office she began "to be pressured by the operators and from there she managed the situation in the best possible way to cover the huge payment delays that had dragged on for years".
With much effort, she said, "some payments were still made through the National Treasury, until, in October and November 2020, operators said they would suspend their activities in December".
"In this context, we didn't have much choice but to talk to each one of them (operators), explain the financial difficulties and the inability to settle the debt that already amounted to 246 billion kwanzas", she explained.
The Luanda governor said that she "was fully aware of the impact of this measure on the lives of residents", admitting that she was facing a "moment of great turbulence", which she considered to be "transitory", thus apologizing "to Luandans for the inconvenience" ".
"It must be understood as a transition phase, something fleeting, it is a harbinger of something that is coming, Luanda will happen, I have faith", said Joana Lina.
In her intervention, in which she repeatedly asked the citizens of Luanda for understanding, she stated that the total debt to operators increased and did not always correspond to the quality of the service provided.
He assured that the suspension of contracts with the cleaning and garbage collection operators "was legal", because, he explained, they had contracts with their government for seven years, but the Public Contracts Law establishes a period of four years .
She regretted that some companies, after the expiry of the contracts, removed their containers from the streets, "in clear violation of the provisions of the contracts", pointing out that the attitude of her government "was neither hasty nor thoughtless".
"In fact, it was the only way out," she said, to justify the suspension of contracts with operators.
While the "Strategy for the Implementation of the Solid Waste Management Model" is not materialized, she stressed, an emergency plan for public cleaning in Luanda is underway.
A regulation for the cleaning and collection of solid urban waste, which should regulate the participation of citizens in the financing of the cleaning system, a philosophy of direct contracting of large commercial areas and producers of non-domestic waste are some of the axes of the strategy.
A mega garbage collection campaign, which will be led by Joana Lina, is scheduled for next Monday, in Luanda.
