The concern was presented this Tuesday at a joint press conference promoted in Luanda by youth organizations of opposition political parties in the parliament and the Movement of Angolan Students (MEA).
In the document presented by the Secretary General of the United and Revolutionary Youth of Angola (JURA), the youth arm of the Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), Joaquim Kamuango, the youth says, however, "value all the effort undertaken so far by the Government to prevent the spread of the pandemic.
According to the youth leader of UNITA, the largest opposition party, "the entry into the country of citizens whose quarantine was observed only after they infected others opens the possibility of hidden cases".
"There is, therefore, a need for community testing to assess the real epidemiological situation in our country", they ask, considering, on the other hand, that the testing capacity in Angola "is very low".
Besides JURA and MEA, the Youth Patriotics of Angola (JPA), the Youth of the Social Renewal Party (JURS) and the Youth of the National Liberation Front of Angola (JFNLA) were the other promoters of this press conference.
The youth leaders also called on the government, "despite covid-19, to pay greater attention to tropical diseases, which cause the most deaths in our country, especially malaria and tuberculosis.
"Every day we witness the deaths of dozens of Angolans, many of them young and children," they say.
For young people, the alleged silence of the Angolan authorities "seems to be a sign of some disinterest" when they emphasize "millions of kwanzas are channelled only to the fight against covid-19, forgetting other diseases.
On this occasion, the young people, who are assigned to Angolan political parties in the opposition and the MEA, also express concern about "the excesses of the national police" in relation to civilians: "There are more deaths of defenceless citizens and mostly young people, shot by the police, than deaths by covid-19".
The young people admitted "to go into acts of protest, as a way of demanding respect for life" and also called on the police to act within the limits set by the Constitution.
The country, which has been experiencing a public disaster since 26 May, currently has 142 positive cases of covid-19, of which 72 were active, six died and 64 were recovered.
On a global level, according to AFP, the covid-19 pandemic has already claimed more than 434,000 lives and infected almost eight million people in 193 countries and territories.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected in late December in Wuhan, a city in central China.
