Several police officers of the public order and canine brigade were present, who dispersed the demonstration.
Speaking to the Lusa agency, José Pedro Miguel, a motorcycle taxi driver from the Mártires area, said that the objective was to appeal to the authorities to look at the situation they are going through, this activity is their only means of survival.
"We want to know why our colleagues from the 17 provinces work and only we are banned, that is why we came to claim our right", he said.
According to José Pedro Miguel, three of the protesters were taken by the police, allegedly "to have a conversation with the provincial command", and six motorcycles were seized.
"We will wait for the answer they will give us, we will concentrate on a place waiting for ours who were taken", he stressed.
Contacted by Lusa, the president of the Association of Motorcyclists Transporters of Angola (Amotrang), Bento Rafael, said that they learned of the demonstration when they were still in the area of Independence Square, towards the provincial government.
Bento Rafael said that this ban at Luanda level has been a concern of the association for a long time, because "they have been banned from working for a long time, although some, with fear, have been providing some service, since it is through this way that they guarantee that they feed ".
"In order not to go into criminal acts, they have been trying to work in Luanda for a while, but there are many constraints that have been going through," said the official, recalling that, on the one hand, the police must comply with the which is stipulated, "but hunger causes people to go out on the street to provide some service".
The president of Amotrang stressed that they have already written to several entities asking them to look at the situation, proposing that people be looked at with a basic basket.
"Because it is very complicated, forbidden to work for so long, without anyone worrying about what these people eat, it is unfortunate in these situations," said the official.
"We have already written to various entities at the executive level, even to the Minister of Transport himself, giving an account of the less good situation with the ban on the service," said the president of Amotrang, who controls 37,000 motorcycle taxi drivers in Luanda.
In turn, the spokesman for the Luanda provincial command of the National Police, Nestor Goubel, told Lusa that only one demonstrator was detained, for "an act of contempt of authority", with the demonstrators being
persuaded to leave the site without the use of force.
Nestor Goubel said that the start of activity in Luanda is awaiting government regulation, so, for now, they must respect the restrictions.
"The forces were on the ground, without reproach, there was no beatings, we simply talked and persuaded them to leave the place, which was not the best way," he said.
According to Nestor Goubel, the police were on the ground to safeguard possible excesses and contempt.
Motorbike taxi activity was initially banned across the country, when the state of emergency was declared in Angola on 27 March last, due to the covid-19 pandemic, after the declaration of the state of public calamity, it was raised to the remaining provinces, except for Luanda, the epicenter of the disease, where a sanitary cord is fulfilled.
