EPAL employees on strike from Thursday

The strike of employees linked to the areas of production, abstraction, treatment and distribution of water in the Angolan capital, with around eight million inhabitants, was announced by EPAL's first union secretary, António Martins.

According to the union leader, who was speaking to Rádio Luanda, the constant salary delays, the lack of working conditions, the lack of medical and medication assistance and the lack of mandatory insurance against accidents at work and occupational diseases are some of the points in his list of claims .

In the event of an accident, he explained, the EPAL worker "has been paying all the expenses related to the repair of the physical damage he suffers", also verifying "deviation of values ​​for the payment of tax" at the National Institute of Social Security ( INSS).

"Some workers of retirement age feel obliged to do work that is industrial and for which, by its nature, a younger technician is needed, but due to lack of payment at the INSS they are forced to continue working even when they are with reduced physical and psychological capacity," said the union leader.

During the strike, the strikers guarantee the minimum services for the supply of water to the population.

António Martins also accused the employer of diverting the real estate built and financed by the workers, stating that the residences covered "are being distributed by people close to or relatives of members of the company's management".

"The workers have just gone into retirement, others even end up dying, without ever receiving a house they finance and there is also the situation of refusal to pay wages for some workers who have been working for more than five years," he pointed out.

EPAL's first trade union secretary, assigned to the General Central of Independent and Free Trade Unions of Angola (CGSILA), referred, on the other hand, that the public company is facing an insufficiency of chemical products for water treatment, "which threatens life of the citizens of the province of Luanda".

"There is still the existence of financial management software that encourages theft and financial fraud in the company, but the employer refuses to make an effort to put an end to this situation, and we are verifying that there is always a worker embezzling millions in the company ", he stressed.

The strike by EPAL employees, he stressed, was declared at a general meeting held last Friday, December 17: "We do not have a fixed date for the end of the strike, but we are open to negotiations".

The chairman of the Board of Directors of EPAL, under the Ministry of Energy and Water, died last August of illness, and the company still does not have a new president.
The union leader said that the absence of an administration president "has been one of the factors that further aggravates the concerns of the employees", because "administrators say they do not have the legitimacy to deal with many situations".

"That is why we have, through letters, requested the minister to take a position that would influence the President of the Republic to urgently appoint a president since this situation is causing us some inconvenience", he maintained.

"But, in a way, we also do not accept that our problem is not solved, because other problems are being solved, but [who are beneficial are] the members of the board of directors", he stressed.

António Martins also said that employees are "strangely" at the hiring of new workers and "irregular contracts" for the connection of water in some condominiums, allegedly for the benefit of members of the board of directors.