The former trickle of unpaid Portuguese workers returning from Angola has turned into a flood as 500 construction workers every month are finding their way back home to face unemployment and an uncertain future.
The head of the Portuguese construction union warns that many of those who are coming from Angola to Portugal "will have to end up back there again, because there is no work in Portugal.”
The union leader said on Friday that every month 500 construction workers return from Angola to Portugal, but he would not guess at how many workers from other sectors were following the same hopeless path.
"In the past three months, workers involved in the construction industry in Angola have been returning at the rate of 500 a month and this will increase if no action is taken," said the union president Albano Ribeiro who added that wage arrears in over 200 Portuguese companies that operate in Angola is the reason and that "there are many more returning from other sectors."
Commenting on a report from the Securities Market Commission (CMVM) today, Ribeiro warned that the breakdown of exports to Angola and Brazil will be a motivating factor in the return of numerous workers contracted by Portuguese companies. This will put under increasing pressure Portugal’s social security services and any economic recovery.
"Even today we asked for an urgent meeting with the Secretary of State for Communities because there are situations of up to unpaid wages in Angola and there already are workers there that have no money with which to survive," said Ribeiro.
The chairman of the construction union is concerned "that 200 companies in the sector have gone bankrupt in Portugal with total debts of more than €220 million which affects thousands of workers in Angola alone.
In Portugal the minimum monthly wage construction workers can expect to earn is €545, they were earning around €2,000 a month in Angola where there now is no work despite a need to complete bridges, highways and homes that were destroyed in the civil wars.
The drop in the oil price has depleted Angola’s available cash for infrastructure projects with the president accused of pocketing a large percentage of oil commissions for his personal benefit. USD32 billion is known to be missing from the national accounts in the decade to 2012.
President José Eduardo dos Santo’s daughter is still the richest woman in Africa with continuing concern that her significant shareholding in many of Portugal’s top companies has been funded by money stolen from the Angolan state.
