Africa-Press – Angola. The President of the Republic urged, yesterday, “greater reflection on the challenges to be faced in order to maintain the spirit of selfless work and the need for each one of us to work towards generating more jobs in the country”.
João Lourenço made the appeal via a message published on his official account on the social network Facebook, on the occasion of International Workers’ Day, marked yesterday.
“The only way to guarantee the well-being of families and leave a better quality of life and a developed country to posterity is decent work”, highlights the President of the Republic in the message.
International Workers’ Day is celebrated annually on May 1 in practically every country in the world, being a holiday in many, in honor of a strike that began on May 1, 1886, in the American city of Chicago, which involved several hundred workers across the country of North America.
The strike aimed to claim better working conditions, especially the reduction of the daily journey, which reached 17 hours, to eight. It is said that, during the demonstration, there were clashes with the police, resulting in the arrests and deaths of workers. This event would serve, then, as an inspiration for many other manifestations that would follow, culminating, later, in a series of rights, foreseen in laws and legitimized by Constitutions.
The country generated more than 400,000 jobs
In the message on the State of the Nation, of 15 October last year, in the National Assembly, the President of the Republic made it known that the country generated, from 2018 to 2022, a total of 491 thousand jobs.
With regard to the public services sector, the President of the Republic said that 33,093 new professionals had been included in the special career and in the general regime, corresponding to an increase of 35 percent in the total workforce in the Health sector. “They are mostly young professionals and placed mainly at the level of primary care”, he said at the time. The Head of State stressed that, similarly to the Health sector, 20,109 new teachers were admitted to Education, from 2018 until the moment when the State of the Nation was presented to the country, at a time when no new staff were hired in public service in general.
Meanwhile, the President of the Republic stressed that, fundamentally due to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, on the lives of companies, in the same period, there were 272,000 suspensions of employment contracts, thus having a positive balance of 219 thousand formal jobs maintained.
Encouraging teachers
With a view to encouraging teachers and other agents in the Education sector, the Executive approved, at the last meeting of the Council of Ministers, chaired by the President of the Republic, the attribution of the “Attendency Prize”, in a percentage value of 12.5 percent on the base salary For this undertaking, the Executive is prepared to invest, every year, more than 49 billion kwanzas.
According to the Minister of Education, Luísa Grilo, the aforementioned award will be reflected in the salaries of teachers and other agents in the sector as early as this month of May, including retroactive ones attributed since March of this year.
The Minister of Education clarified that the initiative aims to promote good professional performance and increase the financial income of teachers, ensuring that the aforementioned award is permanent and joins those for decoration and exposure to chemical agents, which teachers already enjoy. .
In February of this year, the Executive also approved, in an ordinary session of the Council of Ministers, the attribution of subsidies for isolation, installation, house rent, preferably in the mobility of the spouse, access to housing, among other benefits to be attributed by the State to civil servants and administrative agents placed in areas of difficult access and devoid of offers of essential goods and services, such as telecommunications, banks and transport, starting this year.
The measure, according to the Minister of Public Administration, Labor and Social Security, Teresa Rodrigues Dias, aims to attract, maintain and move qualified staff to the State’s Local Administration.
In practice, Teresa Rodrigues Dias made it known that, in financial terms, civil servants and administrative agents placed in areas of difficult access will receive an isolation subsidy corresponding to 30 percent of the base salary, an installation subsidy corresponding to 50 percent base salary and housing allowance equal to 30% of base salary.
As for the installation subsidy, the Minister for Public Administration, Work and Social Security stressed that it will be paid in a single installment, that is, when the official or administrative agent is placed in the area considered difficult to access. Regarding the preference for mobility of the spouse, Teresa Rodrigues Dias clarified that this measure will allow the spouses of civil servants or administrative agents to transfer or be seconded to the same location, thus benefiting from the right of preference in filling out existing vacancies.
With regard to access to housing and other social benefits, he continued, these officials will enjoy preference in access to qualifications and other social programs promoted by the State.
Teresa Rodrigues Dias assured that the financial coverage of these measures is foreseen in the 2023 Budget for employees and administrative agents who are in the hidden zones, considered C and D.
Teresa Rodrigues Dias stressed that, in a first phase, these measures will cover 104 municipalities and a universe of 55,000 public and administrative employees, in accordance with the Presidential Decree that classifies provinces into typologies A, B, C and D.
The Minister of Public Administration, Work and Social Security revealed that this undertaking will cost the State coffers more than 10 billion kwanzas per month and 51 billion and 500 million kwanzas per year.
In order to ensure the scrupulous application of these measures, Teresa Rodrigues Dias announced that the General Inspectorate of State Administration (IGAE) will carry out inspection and inspection actions at the level of the municipalities covered.
Teresa Rodrigues Dias mentioned that there was already, in the past, a Presidential Decree, dated 2003, with these measures, but they were not implemented due to the financial impact they entail.
The Minister of Public Administration, Labor and Social Security stressed that the creation of these measures resulted from hard work, which involved the participation of several ministerial departments, with emphasis on Finance, remembering that the country has approximately 400,000 employees public and about 70 percent of them are linked to State Local Administration bodies.
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