Alda Candeia, vice-consul for registration, explained that this post will be permanent and that its aim is to make life easier for all Angolans who are on Portuguese land and who want to take care of issuing their ID.
Cited by Angop, she explained that Angolans who are issuing their ID for the first time need some documents: a valid consular registration, an identification document from one of their parents, a certificate of residence issued by the local authorities and a copy of their birth certificate.
Alda Candeia also said that the creation of a post of this kind would already be under development, after in 2018, during a visit by João Lourenço to Portugal, Angolans complained about the difficulty of issuing the identification document: "The action was about to start some time ago, but the covid-19 pandemic made it impossible".
For the time being, the service at the post will be carried out by appointment, so that the security measures against covid-19 are guaranteed. The station "will operate by appointment and we will attend 50 users per day to collect data for issuing the identity card. The criminal record is requested and delivered on time", explained the vice-consul.
She also said that the identification document is expected to be delivered in Angola within 15 days, with users being notified by telephone.
The consulate stipulated a group of around 125 citizens, who returned from Angola in the years immediately following independence (1974/75) and who are now considered stateless, as priorities for issuing their identity cards.
"They are not Portuguese citizens, they are not Angolan citizens, but they worked for the Portuguese government for many years and now need to do their respective reform processes," said Alda Candeia.
"These citizens are our priority, they are identified and located and first we will do the birth registration and, after that, they will be able to deal with the identity card", she added.
José Gabriel, representative of the Angolan community living in Lisbon, applauded the initiative.
In turn, the Secretary of State for International Cooperation and Angolan Communiqués, Custodio Vieira Lopes, quoted by Jornal de Angola, said that Angolans will no longer have to travel "to Luanda to deal with these documents.
He also revealed that this initiative will reach other countries where the Angolan community is quite strong. "It is a work that will be definitive. In the same way that we treat passports, we will do it with ID cards", he added.
The Angolan Ambassador in Portugal, Carlos Alberto Fonseca, also pointed out the "saving" of time and distance for Angolan citizens achieved with the opening of the fixed post for data collection.
"We save time and distance for the citizen. Six hours of flight and more than seven thousand kilometres of distance that was previously taken to process the document in Angola. This is a state structure that comes to serve the citizen more economically and more quickly," said the diplomat.
The post in Lisbon will serve the entire Angolan community in Portugal, estimated by the ambassador at around 40,000 people.
Ondina Bunga, one of the first users of the consulate's new service, explained, in a statement to the Lusa agency, that she had come to remove the Angolan criminal record, necessary for the renewal of the residence permit to be delivered at the Foreigners and Borders Service.
"Having this service here is wonderful. It's about time. It was very complicated to handle the documentation in Angola," he said, pointing out, beyond the distance, the huge queues in the Angolan services.
"The last time I renewed the identity card I had to adapt the holidays to deal with it," he added, underlining "the huge step" that it represents to be able to do it now from Lisbon.
During this phase and due to the covid-19 pandemic, the service will operate preferably by appointment, with the service taking place every day of the week, except on Thursday, between 09h30 and 12h30.
