Luanda, July 3, 2025 (Lusa) - Angola's Inspector General of Labour, Manuel Bole, today acknowledged his concern on Thursday about the oil sector, where an accident on an oil platform recently resulted in three deaths as well as serious injuries.
In May of this year, a fire broke out on the basement deck of the Benguela Belize Lobito Tomboco deepwater platform of the Cabinda Golf Oil Company (Cabgoc), a subsidiary of Chevron, located in Block 14, in the maritime area of Cabinda, initially resulting in 17 injuries, four of which were serious, culminating in the death of three people.
Manuel Bole, who was speaking at the presentation of data from the Ministry of Public Administration, Labour and Social Security (MAPTSS) for the first half of the year, said that this sector has been "monitored with due care", stressing that the second series of the "Decent Work" operation will soon be launched, which will also target oil activities.
Regarding the accident in question, Manuel Bole emphasised the difficulty of accessing the site for inspection.
"It was very difficult for us, the General Labour Inspectorate, to obtain data in the first instance (...) but fortunately we managed to create some dynamics with the Ministry of Mineral Resources, Oil and Gas and the information was passed on to us, with daily reports," he said.
According to the Inspector General of Labour, the data they had access to is public and shows some fatalities, with all the injured workers transferred to South Africa for proper assistance, "unfortunately, some of them died".
Concerning the conditions that must be created to avoid "daily accidents at all levels", Manuel Bole emphasised that the companies that were providing services at the time "have the conditions", and there was "an oversight" due to the area where the activity was being carried out and where the accident occurred.
"It was an area that was initially deactivated, and the teams thought that there was no substance in it that could have caused the accident. Unfortunately, this happened, but both the provincial service, which is our local representation, which has been monitoring the work, and the companies directly linked to the sector, have been doing everything they can to improve conditions and prevent more and more accidents of this kind," he emphasised.
At the time, the secretary-general of the Cabinda Petroleum and Related Industry Workers' Union (STIPAC), André Capita, stated that reports from the General Labour Inspectorate, to which they have access, indicate that there are frequent accidents and incidents at work in the oil sector.
"The reports presented to us by the General Labour Inspectorate, which I doubt are finished reports, show that every year we have had extremely high numbers of accidents at work in the oil sector, and, in those figures presented to us, they also show us the number of fatalities," he denounced.
Figures from the General Labour Inspectorate for the first half of this year show that more than 3,850 visits were made, more than 16,000 infractions were recorded, and 3,824 labour disputes were mediated.
Manuel Bole said that the sector where most labour accidents were identified was industry, "where the numbers are much higher than in others".
In his speech, the Secretary of State for Labour and Social Security, Pedro Filipe, said that at the end of this month, the second phase of the "Decent Work" operation will begin, the results of the first phase of which gave "encouraging on the one hand and worrying on the other" indicators.
"Because the findings have given us sufficient indication that we still have very big challenges in terms of regulating the labour market," he said.
NME/ADB // ADB.
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