The data was collected within the scope of “Operation Decent Work”, carried out from July 3rd to August 1st of this year, by a multisectoral team, integrated by the General Labor Inspection (IGT), Migration and Foreigners Service (SME), Service of Criminal Investigation (SIC), National Police, General Tax Administration and National Social Security Institute (INSS).
According to the inspector general of the IGT, Manuel Bole, the operation recorded a total of 10,367 infractions, such as the lack of mandatory registration of workers in Social Security, excessive working hours, failure to grant vacations to workers, non-binding of companies in the mandatory social protection system, the lack of Social Security payments, safety, hygiene and health services at work, moral harassment in the workplace, among others.
Manuel Bole said that this was the first phase of the operation, with the second starting on the 19th of the current month until September 19th, covering the civil construction and public works and mining sectors.
In this first phase, 65 companies were temporarily suspended, as they put at risk “the life, health and physical integrity of workers, essentially in the extractive and manufacturing sectors, with greater emphasis on the provinces of Luanda, Benguela, Huíla, Malanje, Lunda North, Uíje and Cunene.
The IGT inspector general highlighted that more than a thousand companies were visited, mainly in the commerce sector (61 percent), covering a total of 32,566 workers, of which 1003 were expatriates.
During the operation, authorities detected that foreign citizens were in office without work visas, and arrests were also recorded for disobedience to authorities, most notably a Vietnamese citizen who removed the suspension tape from his establishment.
Citizens were also arrested for falsifying invoices, false income declarations, renting business licenses and illegal possession of firearms, and authorities seized three AKM-type firearms.
“Several incidents were verified, highlighting the exploitation of child labor, which occurred in the province of Benguela, where citizens of Chinese nationality subjected two children under the age of 13 to domestic work,” said Manuel Bole. According to the same source, the minors were kept in captivity, being prevented from “moving around normally”.
The minors are from the province of Huíla and were taken to Benguela where they worked as maids in a commercial establishment. “Fortunately, once the situation was identified and within the framework of collaboration with the authorities and the local National Children's Institute, it was possible to transfer these children to the province of Huíla, where they originated, and they are now in the family home”, he stressed.
As part of the operation, more than 22,640 workers were interviewed, of which more than 80 percent work in Luanda, from the provinces of Huíla, Bié and Huambo, and the remaining 20 percent work in Benguela, also displaced from Huíla and Bié.
The report with the results of the operation indicates that the workers interviewed claimed that they were removed from the interior of their provinces of origin by foreign citizens, their employers, to work in other regions of the country, “without the minimum rest from work activity, subjected to precarious accommodation conditions and poor quality of food, excessive working hours, no right to vacation and wages lower than the national minimum wage”.
