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Angola Diary
17th -23th November 2003
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I am a clo worker employed by MAG in 1999 after training as a deminer. I was born in Kakonda -Huila province and both my mother and father are still living in Kakonda. I had been working for a certain project within the Ministry of Health as a logistician for 3 years. This project stopped its operations in Cunene in 1996 and so I got laid off. I stayed for two years without a job. Life was quite difficult for me as I have a big family to support. How ever, things changed when I started working for MAG. With the income I receive in MAG I am able to take care of my wife and 14 children. I have built myself a house in which I leave,So, I feel that MAG's activities should be financially supported to continue providing the demining services to the affected communities and also employment
I work directly with the community to gather mine related information and also teach them about mines and UXOs. I have visited many areas within the province, holding meetings in which the majority of the participants have been children. We operate in rural areas and most of these people we serve are very poor. They lack many things for example: clean water, food, medical services etc.
On our part we need more funds to purchase teaching material to boost our mine awareness activities. Currently there is only one clo team which I think is not enough. There is still a lot to be done as MAG tries to expand into new areas, it is necessary to create another team. Transport is yet another problem as we are currently depending only on one vehicle which is constantly breaking down. How ever, I would like to take this advantage to thank the Japanese Television Broadcasting System for funding our demining team and I would like the JTBS to try and convince other organizations to do the same to help Angola eliminate these lethal weapons scattered across the country.
End of report.
Yours truly,
Joao Muteca
CL Team Member
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