Mozambique: Pensions for former guerrillas condition for peace, says Renamo - AIM
TVM / Ombudsman Jose Abudo addressing parliament today
Many senior officials in the Mozambican public administration, including ministers, judges and mayors, “feel comfortable with arbitrary behaviour, abuses, illegalities and injustices”, accused the ombudsman, Jose Abudo, on Wednesday.
Delivering his annual report to the country’s parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, Abudo said officials were contradicting “the principle of acting in obedience to the law”.
Arising from the complaints that citizens had made to the Ombudsman’s office, in the period from April 2016 to March 2017, Abudo had made 27 recommendations, of which eight had been accepted and four rejected. But the state bodies affected by the majority (15) of the recommendations had simply not replied, thus violating the law on the Ombudsman’s powers which gives them just a fortnight to reply.
Among the bodies which did not reply were the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy, the Inhambane provincial government, and the Maputo and Matola Municipal Councils.
In the case of the Interior Ministry, citizens complained that they had been sacked from the ministry or expelled from the police force, without the right to defend themselves in a disciplinary hearing. Abudo had no doubt that their rights had been violated, and should be restored. But the Ministry simply ignored his recommendations.
In a more complex case, the Ministry of State Administration refused to pay the “exceptional wages” which a former district administrator was claiming. The Ministry did reply, but argued there was a legal case for not paying the wages. Abudo found the Ministry’s arguments “unconvincing”, and that it was the Ministry which was in breach of the law. Nonetheless, the Ministry still rejected Abudo’s conclusion that the wages should be paid.
Abudo’s report said that some bodies “are opting for absolute silence and even refuse to participate when the Ombudsman, attempting to mediate, promotes meetings between them and the complainants, in order to overcome disputes”.
The Ombudsman’s office should also oversee implementation of the 2014 law on freedom of information. This makes it obligatory for the National State Archives System to provide the Ombudsman with a list of freedom of information requests received, indicating which were granted and which were denied.
But the reports from the Central Management of the State Archives System do not contain this information, and it was not included even after Abudo drew attention to what he called “this crass omission”.
One serous constraint on implementing the freedom of information law, Abudo added, was that civil servants often do not know which items of information are classified and which are not. Furthermore, in some state institutions “the archives are disorganised which makes it difficult to locate the documents requested in good time”.
He pointed out that freedom of information “is one of the pillars for consolidating the democratic participation of citizens in the life of the country”.
Abudo admitted that his office is hamstrung by shortage of funds, pointing out that 42 per cent of its budget goes on paying rent for the building it currently uses. Furthermore the very existence of the Ombudsman is poorly publicised, and the office only exists in Maputo, with no permanent representation in the provinces.
But this was no excuse for violations of the law and of the basic principles on which the public administration should operate. Abudo called on state officials “to comply with their general duty to study and apply the laws and the decisions of the bodies of state power”.
In the short and desultory debate that followed Abudo’s report, Silverio Ronguane, a deputy for the opposition Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM) asked what will happen to officials who violate the law on freedom of information. “Will they remain unpunished?”, he asked.
But Abudo, in his closing remarks, did not answer this question.
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