Africa-Press – Angola. The President of the Republic, João Lourenço, this Thursday deplored the vandalization of public assets, highlighting that they must deserve the protection of everyone.
On his Facebook page, the Head of State wrote that “nothing justifies the destruction of public property”.
Therefore, he expressed that “we must firmly discourage all practices that contribute to the destruction of the assets that belong to all of us as a society”.
Acts of vandalism to public goods and services are causing significant losses to the State, especially with regard to the subtraction of services to which citizens already had access, such as the supply of water and electricity.
As a combat measure, the Government decided to criminalize these acts with prison sentences ranging between 5 and 10 years, given the high losses caused to the State and the placing at risk of the sustainability of public investment made to satisfy collective needs.
The proposed law aimed at sanctioning these practices was recently assessed by the Council of Ministers, for submission to the National Assembly.
Called “Law on the Crimes of Vandalism of Public Goods and Services”, the diploma constitutes a specialized legal framework to combat vandalism of public goods and services, thus optimizing the existing regulatory treatment, as well as adapting the current regime to developments. the needs for prevention and repression of this type of crime.
The main motive behind this Bill is linked to the fact that, in recent times, we have been witnessing a growing number of acts of vandalization and destruction of public goods and services, with emphasis on infrastructures in the Energy, Water and , Transport, Telecommunications, Health and Education, thus being prevented from serving citizens to the desired extent and fulfilling the main purpose for which they were implemented.
The legislative provisions in force, despite providing for some protection mechanisms, have been insufficient to correctly address the phenomenon. This proposed law introduces a new vision in the process of predicting crime and sanctions for its main offenders.
The “Law on the Crimes of Vandalism of Public Goods and Services” will bring, in terms of new features, an approach to the entire circuit of the process of committing the crime, which will involve the punishment of any citizen who directly commits the crime, instigates, finance or sponsor these actions, as well as those who purchase public goods resulting from the crime of vandalizing and destroying or stealing public property.
From this perspective, the law provides for crimes such as “Destruction of Public Property”, “Damage to Public Property”, “Attack to the Security of Public Property”, “Subtraction of Public Property”, “Reception of Public Property”, in other words, the purchase of an asset resulting from the commission of this crime.
The “Law on the Crimes of Vandalism of Public Goods and Services” provides for heavier penalties for holders of political positions, members of Defense and Security bodies, public servants and agents, law enforcement agents or workers of public service concession companies, if prove your participation in this chain.
For foreign citizens involved in this type of crime, the law provides, in addition to the prison sentence, expulsion from national territory, an act to be carried out after serving the sentence.
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