According to Carlos Alberto dos Santos, 742 ravines were identified across the country, and an emergency program was approved in 2022 by the President, João Lourenço.
The minister highlighted that these ravines put people's lives and public investments made by the State at risk, in various areas such as infrastructure, centralities and housing.
According to the government official, the priority in this program, with an execution close to 40 percent, was for the most critical ravines, which made it possible to recover areas for agriculture, mine development, housing construction and others.
During the launching ceremony of the 2024-2028 Cooperation Framework between the Angolan Government and the United Nations (UN), the minister requested support for the local training of staff with a view to containing the problem in its initial phase.
"If we train, at a local level, the State's local administration bodies in processes of identification and characterization of the formation of ravines, and provide these same bodies with minimum means so that containment can be carried out in a timely and local manner, obviously we will be in the presence of a very large reduction in this phenomenon", he stressed.
The holder of the Urban Planning and Housing portfolio considered it necessary to change the way this program has been handled, so that, at a local level, it is possible to train staff and acquire the means to block ravines.
The provinces in the most critical situation are Uíge, Lunda Norte, Lunda Sul, Moxico, Malanje and Cabinda.
The government official highlighted that natural and human causes lead to a "serious situation of the emergence of ravines", to which the type of soil, intense rains, plant devastation and drainage solutions contribute.
"The phenomenon we are witnessing today is serious, as we always see from the images – and we who travel all over the country – we are having major power problems, at a national level, having our national roads, bridges, centralities, high voltage stations, water collection centers and even the private investments that people make, is a concern" , he said.
