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Angolan President, João Lourenço, on Monday made a field visit to the new Luanda international airport to assess the execution level of the work being carried out.

The new airport, named after the first president of Angola, Dr. António Agostinho Neto, has already received final certification of the project and is expected to become fully operational in December2023.

The airport is budgeted at 1.4 billion US dollars.

ANGOP has learnt that the president’s programme includes visits to the air navigation and airport management building, the regional and integrated control centre, passenger terminal, lounge, commercial areas, check-in and others.

Luanda International Airport "Dr. António Agostinho Neto", covers an area of 1,324 hectares with capacity to receive 15 million passengers and a volume of goods of 50,000 tons per year.

The infrastructure has two double runways able to receive aircraft such as the B747 and A380 - currently the largest commercial aircraft, and also includes construction of an airport city that will cover a 75 square kilometers area.

The southern runway, which is the airport's longest side, is 4000 metres long and 60 meters wide, where the first experimental flight was carried out, in June, 2022, with a Boeing 777 aircraft of the Angolan airline TAAG.

The construction works are being carried out by Aviation Industry Corp of China (AVIC).

President Lourenço’s last visit to the facilities to the airport was in December 2022.

Source: Angola Press News Agency (APNA)

The Angolan airlines TAAG will carry out two flights a day, to Lisbon, Portugal, as of Tuesday, 28th, making available, in total, 14 frequencies per week to this European country.

The objective is to add more mobility options to passengers and clients, given the growth in market demand, on this route which is one of the most consolidated international routes in the company's operation.

According to a note released to the press, TAAG aircraft will now leave Luanda for Lisbon at 12:40 pm and 11:45 pm.

"Portugal is one of the preferred destinations and the gateway to Europe for various passengers, including tourists, families and businesses from Angola, Africa and South America", reads the note.

However, Angola is positioned as an important hub for receiving and redirecting air traffic from Portugal to the various TAAG destinations in the southern hemisphere.

In 2023, and taking the whole of January and February as reference, 39,306 passengers were carried on the Luanda-Lisbon route, twice as many as the 18,798 passengers carried in the same period last year.

Additionally, in 2022, the Luanda-Lisbon route recorded an average load factor (occupancy rate) of 72.3%, a positive indicator within the parameters of civil aviation.

The Angolan airliner reinforces its commitment to improving customer service, providing families and the corporate segment with greater availability on connections to their preferred destinations.

Source: Angola Press News Agency (APNA)

The Speaker of the National Assembly, Carolina Cerqueira, pointed out on Monday, in Luanda, the use of education to change mindsets on the role and place of women in society and education for equality and gender equity.

Carolina Cerqueira, who was speaking at the opening of a conference on violence against women and human rights, said that the empowerment of women should occur through the integration of the topic in the school programmes of the various educational systems and the promotion of a straight, open and inclusive dialogue among all sections of the society on violence against women, the advantages of women´s participation in decision making and mechanisms to stop acts of violence.

Carolina Cerqueira points out as risk factors for violence against women, their low level of education and although they are 52% of the Angolan population, 47% of Angolan women did not have access to school or have low education.

"Exposure to violence in childhood, complacent attitude towards violence, the lack of a culture of denunciation, and lack of preparation of the police and judicial bodies to deal with complaints are other risk factors for domestic violence among us”, she stressed.

Carolina Cerqueira said that this situation exposes the increase in poverty and inequality against women and children evident in the lack of health facilities and security, school dropout and low access to basic health services such as drinking water, vaccines, identity card, legal advice, employment or loans, by depriving them of adequate protection and at risk of sexual violence and abuse.

To Carolina Cerqueira, the victims must deserve humanitarian support and permanent help for effective participation in rebuilding their lives and in the process of social inclusion, which means ensuring women’s equal access to information, job opportunities, training, loans, and financial aid mechanisms to achieve stability and community integration, to help solve their families' problems.

"It is unavoidable, as a basic principle of modern societies, the equality between men and women, de iure and de facto, of participation in the economy, in politics, and in the various sectors of the country's life, on equal terms, where they can feel fully realized as human beings, without discrimination of any kind, or barriers imposed by violence. It is necessary to review the criminal framework and verify whether the crime of domestic violence actually exists as a type of offence, since the new penal code makes no reference to it and the law against domestic violence is not properly specific“, she added.

In her opinion, it is necessary to look further into actions to increase the effectiveness of the authorities' actions, such as the increase of preventive imprisonment (remand) and effective imprisonment for aggressors of domestic violence, as well as to consider the creation of a multidisciplinary team responsible for improving the quality and communication of information between the various public entities.

He stressed that domestic violence also impacts the economic life of the victims and the environment in which they are inserted, causing the loss of the economy of the country due to the deterioration of the victims' mental health and productive capacity, reducing the women´s human capital and making them economically dependent on the offender, continuing the vicious cycle of violence.

Meanwhile, Carolina Cerqueira said that, it will be possible to make a more objective assessment of the figures, the number of occurrences, causes and measures to fight violence against women especially, and against all human rights, in general.

In Angola, by legislative initiative of the National Assembly, Law No. 25/11 was approved, on the legal framework for the prevention of domestic violence, protection and assistance to victims.

Source: Angola Press News Agency (APNA)