Luanda — The Angolan minister of Environment, Maria de Fátima Jardim, has urged the country's garbage collecting companies to operate with more responsibility and respect for public health.

The minister was speaking during a meeting she had on Wednesday with representatives of cleaning and garbage collecting companies in the Angolan capital.

According to Fatima Jardim, there is still an inappropriate procedure in the collection and dumping of wastes on the part of some operators.

Such attitudes like the dumping of wastes in the open, the accumulation of rubbish on main and secondary streets and inside of visited installations and unprotected landfills have been exposing the populations to the wastes, the minister said.

She added that this contact is an attempt against public health, hence the reason for the Ministry of Environment, through its services of control, to notify and fine the companies Recolix, Vista Waste, Kiaxi Wast and Rangol, in Luanda, following a blitz.

She explained that every fined company shall be paying Akz 5.0 million (about Usd 50,000) in 15 days time.

"Good procedures and sound practices by cleaning and garbage collecting companies must constitute indispensable facts for the organisation of a sustainable and democratised society," she stated.

According to the minister, Fátima Jardim the Cabinet Council in August this year approved the Waste Management Regulation and Urban Wastes Strategic Plan (PESGRU), which are environmental norms that must be complied with in the whole country.