The concern of the former soldiers is contained in a letter sent to the municipal administrator of Viana by the Association of Merchants, Industrialists and Service Providers in Viana (ACIPSV), which oversees the cooperatives gathered in Calumbo.
According to ACIPSV, in a letter to which Lusa had access on Friday, work on deforestation, plumbing, land preparation, installation of tanks for raising tilapia, aviaries and hovels began in March 2021.
The association said it had invested 860 million kwanzas in the space, the result of a bank loan, and that the invasions, allegedly commanded by the head of inspection in Calumbo, began in September 2022, shortly after the first harvest.
The ex-soldiers said that the "invasions" and destruction of crops also involved police personnel, allegedly authorized by Viana's municipal administration to destroy even the precarious homes of cooperative members.
"What worries us, ex-soldiers a lot, is knowing that this is the sixth time that the elements of the inspection of the commune of Calumbo have come to cause confusion in our cooperative area", they said, in a letter dated 6 March 2023.
ACIPSV, in the document signed by its president, Francisco Gregório Manuel, also requested the intervention of the Criminal Investigation Service (SIC) of Viana and the government of Luanda to stop the "illegality", which has been going on for more than five months, and "severely punish" offenders.
"They did not stop with the actions, they continue to practice acts of vandalism, such as the destruction of the irrigation system, the vandalism of the water channel that supplies the project, creating inconvenience and huge losses and compromising the harvest that we would have in the month of December," he lamented.
The association also said that, last February, they registered a situation of poisoning (with diesel) in the fish breeding tank and that, in the first week of March, the "invaders" returned to "vandalize" the space, expelling the former military and other workers.
Members also expressed their "desperation" by the consequent "attacks" on their cultures and properties, and lamented the "lack of responses" from the legal institutions they resort to.
"We have already resorted to hierarchically superior instances and without success to date. Let's hope that the institutions and people of law take a position in the face of this situation that is getting worse every day", they also mentioned.
