Social program focuses on health and education
PROVINCE OF LUANDA Progress is being made to extend water and power supplies and to improve the living conditions of the population

ractical measures to raise living standards have been the order of the day in Luanda, the Angolan capital, since the present authorities took office in 1997.
“Our attention has been focused on the improvement of water and energy supplies,” says Luanda provincial governor Anibal Rocha. “At the moment, we are providing water for 600,000 people in areas which have not had water for more than 20 years.”
The project, inaugurated in November 2000, is only the first phase of the governor’s plan to improve supplies. The second phase is now under way to bring water to 1.5 million people next year.
This will be followed by the third and final phase, which aims to bring water to four million people in Luanda – the estimated population of the entire city and its environs.
The deadline for the completion of this work is 2005.

Rocha: focused

“This is the biggest water-supply project ever undertaken in Angola,” says Mr Rocha, and it has come at a cost. The first phase was $64 million and the second has been budgeted at $54 million. No estimate for the third stage has been disclosed.
Progress has also been made in the energy sector, particularly in extending the network of electricity transmission lines, and setting power tariffs at levels that will provide sufficient funds for future investment, Mr Rocha adds.
Education and health are at the forefront of the provincial government’s social policy. In the past, Luanda has faced serious problems in education: at the beginning of last year, an estimated 160,000 children were outside the educational system because there were no schools for them to attend. The government has built and opened new schools in a bid to reduce this number.

Similarly, the health program has required attention, not least because diseases such as malaria, polio, tuberculosis and sleeping sickness have yet to be eradicated in Angola. The approach to raising health standards has been preventive. “We have developed mass vaccination campaigns in order to reach the
most vulnerable of the population,” says the governor.
“We have vaccinated more than 1.5 million children.” The government is building nine new hospitals and has opened medical clinics.
Luanda’s social problems are exacerbated by the thousands of people who have flocked from the interior of the country to the capital in an attempt to escape the civil war.
Mr Rocha’s aim is to eventually persuade them to go back to their homelands, although he recognizes that this will take time. “A great number of people who have come here are farmers who had their own properties,” he says, adding that nobody likes to leave their land. “They are here only because of the insecure conditions in their own areas, and I believe they would feel better living there again. We must create the right conditions in order to encourage them to return home.”

Boost investment
However, while stability in the interior remains in question, he acknowledges that Luanda has to cope with the inflow of refugees.
“We are executing projects to accommodate them here,” he says.
Looking further ahead, Mr Rocha hopes to boost investment in the capital. “We are improving our infrastructure in order to attract investment in the industrial development of Luanda.
“We will set attractive prices for investors and establish partnerships with them in the services sector. We can also reduce the cost of some of the services we provide, such as water and energy. Foreign investors should be hopeful and have confidence in Angola because their investments will be safe,” he says.