Three cooperants were received this Tuesday by the Ambassador of Portugal in Angola, Pedro Pessoa e Costa, at the Portuguese embassy in Luanda, to whom they exposed their concerns.
Speaking to Lusa after the hearing, Yuri Guimarães said that the board of the Portuguese Teaching Cooperative in Angola (CPEA), the entity that manages EPL, has not observed the internal statutes since it took office in 2017, and has taken decisions "at will" contrary to the higher body of the cooperative, the general assembly.
These decisions call into question the educational community and has even left some students deprived of studying, said the guardian, explaining that this was due to the fact that there was a tuition hike.
"At the time, there was a group of parents who, within their rights, went to the school to try to understand why the fees had been raised without authorization from the assembly. We were ignored and, in protest, the parents decided to pay only the amount of the fee that had been approved in the last assembly," he explained.
Yuri Guimarães also said that all the requests made to the board of the cooperative or to the president of the board to correct the "abuses" were "purely and simply ignored, pointing out issues such as changing the internal regulations of the school and the increase in fees.
"We have been asking for more than three years for a meeting with the management of the cooperative and we are not received. The ambassador has already received them, which shows how much attention the direction of the cooperative pays to the cooperative members", he criticized.
Questioned about the answer given by the ambassador, Yuri Guimarães said that the diplomat transmitted to them that this is a problem between cooperative members and the cooperative.
Another example of non-compliance that he invoked is the fact that the board ends its mandate in May.
"By now they should have called an extraordinary general assembly and prepared the renewal of mandates, which did not happen," he told Lusa, adding that the failure to hold the assembly was justified with the measures of the state of public calamity.
Contacted by Lusa to comment on the complaints, the president of the CPEA, Horácio Pina, rejected any kind of non-compliance.
The responsible said that an extraordinary general assembly has not been convened so far because it is not possible to ensure the necessary distance and compliance with the rules of biosecurity, denying that the mandate of the current board ends in May.
"According to the legal opinion requested by CPEA, the mandate is valid until December 31, according to the code applicable to cooperatives, which is governed by calendar years and not by educational years, so any new board elected in the meantime could not even take office before January 2, 2022," clarified Horácio Pina, stressing that in this case the Portuguese and not the Angolan law applies.
He also said he had not received any document requesting a meeting with the CPEA board and recalled that the current leaders took office in mid-2017, "when the same people were making the same complaints", having agreed at that time to hold early elections, in which the opposing list (in which one of the contesting cooperative members was a candidate) suffered a heavy defeat.
Horácio Pina suggested that, behind the motivations of the group of cooperative members, is the "desire to take power".
The leader added that the complaints calmed down after the elections, but the crisis was "taken advantage of" immediately afterwards to "create groups again and contest everything and everybody".
About the allegations of some students having been excluded, Horácio Pina stressed that "no school accepts to renew the enrollment of debtors" and that EPL tried to give parents several payment possibilities, which were not accepted.
The responsible added that everything is being done with the approval of the Ministry of Education: "We are not doing anything arbitrary".
EPL is a public pre-school, primary and secondary school, owned by the Portuguese State and managed by CPEA.
