On August 26 the Prime Minister and Minister of Defence and Security, Kay Rala Xanana Gusmão, accompanied by Secretary of Defense, Júlio Tomás Pinto, Brigadier-General, Lere Anan Timor and the Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China, Fu Yuanchong, inaugurated one hundred houses for F-FDTL, in Metinaro.

Kay Rala Xanana Gusmão said that “The Armed Forces are the last stronghold for the guarantee of territorial integrity and the preservation of national independence, so it is a mandatory and exclusive responsibility of the State to ensure all the conditions that enable them to maintain internal cohesion and the spirit of unity, feelings only possible to obtain through moral and wellbeing of its troops”.

In his speech he pointed out: “The houses that you now occupy belong to the institution and not any one of you in particular. Later your other comrades and their families will also make use of them. It is therefore an obligation, not only moral but also disciplinary, to preserve this whole complex, maintaining its dignity befitting a space of military nature.

“To our Chinese brothers and to the construction company, in the the person of Ambassador Fu Yuanchong, I presente, on behalf of myself and of all Timorese, our sincere thanks and gratitude for yet another selfless gesture of friendship and solidarity with Timor-Leste, in addition to many others that we have presented in recent years”, said the Prime Minister.

Brigadier General, Lere Anan Timor, also wanted to present his acknowledgments: “We thank the IV Constitutional Government for providing the conditions for the institution to perform its duties with professionalism, as envisaged in our Constitution. We also thank the Government of the People’s Republic of China, represented by its embassy in Timor-Leste. We are very pleased with the conditions that the government created for this institution. “According to Lere Anan Timor, “First, we need to establish and decide the criteria, methods and regulations for the occupants of these buildings”.