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I am one of you who respects very much of the sacrifice of our best independence fighters or FALINTIL Veterans. I mean, Veterans, the ones who hid in deep mountains for 24 years fighting. They sacrificed their own wellbeing, life convenience, family members, almost everything, I would say. With that being said, we are now independent.
Today is FALINTIL's 45th anniversary. In the last 20 years of our independence, it is not fair to keep seeing that some of the Veterans even live in a worse condition than the time living in the mountains. They are getting sick but no adequate health services, they don't even own or entitle to a house. I saw Facebook posting today showing a veteran lives in an old Indonesian-built house given by neighbor. You can imagine, how ironic it is to see an independence veteran lives in such situation while opportunists live luxurious?
Getting adequate housing is a basic right for every citizen, but housing for FALINTIL Veterans is a right and obligation as well that this country has to provide. The state has to initiate a proper housing program that covers improvement of living conditions. We must recognize that the pension fund that being paid to the Veterans is far from enough to improve their living conditions.
It is impossible to build a house with $200 (maybe a little more) bucks monthly pension money; thus providing housing separately will be a miracle. They State has to come asking them where to build the house, to what extent their housing need is, and thus suitable, and adequate housing can be provided.
The kind of mainstream public housing is not going to work for the Veterans. For example, relocating them all together to one place, same size of building, the worse is without sustainable basic infrastructure such as water, and electricity is only to make their living condition worse than improving.
When we call housing is not simply about a bunch of buildings constructed and lived in by human beings, but a home for the Veterans. The housing has to match with their needs, their capacity to maintain, their home to feel happy living inside. Providing housing to the FALINTIL Veterans is a proportional appreciation to their sacrifice.
**Hope this gives you an inspiration.
