A Grim and Gloomy Picture Lurking behind the Glittering Surface of Angola

Angola, a billion-dollar oil industry houses SONILS, the major hub of oil operations in Africa. It pumps out nearly two millions of barrels of oil almost every day. A report from the International Monetary Fund forecasts the economic growth of Angola by 7.1 % for the year of 2010. The well-dressed European and American oil merchants climb down from oversized luxurious vehicles at SONILs. Evidently, the economy of Angola is booming. But, a grim and gloomy picture of Angolans lurks behind the gleaming and glittering surface.

The majority of Angolans rots under slum-like conditions when heavy downpour creates a chaos every year. Bearing witness to this bitter fact is the heart-rending story of Feliciana whose twenty year old son, Francisco was electrocuted in the water gushing out of beneath the mud floor when he grabbed a metal pole for support in the dark. The abyss of her grief is immeasurable as evident from her words, “I don’t want to live here anymore, I want to move away to another place but I have nowhere to go”.

This year the seasonal rain has taken away 54 lives, made ruins of schools, bridges and other edifices, and left over 65,000 people without shelter. Though the northern and southern provinces of Angola received the most rainfall, Luanda the capital city of Angola bore the tons of damage incurred by the rain in torrents. Heavy downpours in the months of February, March and April submerged many areas of the city under water. It led to the collapse of newly-constructed roads, the overflowing of drains, the flooding of large buildings and the abolition of small homes.

The badly affected neighborhoods of Luanda are densely crowded with houses in a disorderly way. The utter lack of sanitation arrangement turned those neighborhoods precarious to inhabit in the rainy season. Pondering over reasons behind the chaotic condition of Luanda during the seasonal rainfall, Cupi Baptista, head of Water and Sanitation at the NGO Development Workshop reveals , “ The construction is not good quality, many families do not have latrines and defecate in the open air, so when it rains you can imagine how the situation gets worse”.

In a news conference recently held at the Presidential Palace, Carlos Feijo the President’s Chief of Staff and Minister of State stated that a new plan is under consideration to sketch integrated solutions to this misery of Luanda, the worst victim of flood. He also voiced that dealing with the problem with heavy hands is a concern with the President to mitigate the after effects of the seasonal rainfall in Luanda. Sanitation arrangement, population resettlement and construction of roads are the focus of this plan.