Ricardo de Abreu was responding on Friday to a concern raised by the deputy of the parliamentary group of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), Maria Luísa Andrade, about an alleged lack of supervision on the country's railways.
The governor said that it is not due to lack of supervision that thefts of rails or the vandalizing of railways are verified, a little bit all over the country, but due to the lack of conscience of the population.
"This is something that we would also like to appeal to the deputies, in the sense of encouraging our population not to take these measures, because they only harm even more those who need these means the most," he said.
The holder of the Transport portfolio stressed that acts of vandalism on railway lines harm not only the economy, but the very safety of the users of these railway lines.
"The theft of these rails, they are not rails that are in operation, they are generally rails that are currently in storage for maintenance or have been replaced and obviously there is a big business here that is underlying the steel and that ends up creating this dynamic, whether in transportation, or even in the Ministry of Energy and other ministries or sectors that end up being attacked in some way," he stressed.
The minister reaffirmed that there is inspection in the railway sector, but there is the notion that it is necessary to transmit to the population that the vandalism of public assets is a crime that should not be encouraged.
The police authorities have regularly announced the detention, in the provinces of Luanda and Benguela, of national citizens suspected of stealing train tracks, caught in the act, as well as cabins and electric cables, lamp posts, drinking water pipes, and railway sleepers.
