Mozambique: Market re-qualification sparks controversy in Nampula – O País

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Mozambique: Market re-qualification sparks controversy in Nampula – O País

4:02 CAT | 25 Jan 2021

Photo: O País

About 3,000 vendors who usually set up shop at Nampula city’s ”Feira Recreativa da Juventude’ claim that they are being expropriated without prior negotiation after operating there for 25 years. The Frelimo youth wing in Nampula, which holds the land rights to the plot, says that the market area is going to be “re-qualified”, and that all 3,000 will be ‘reintegrated’.

The Mozambican Youth Organisation (OJM), the youth wing of the Frelimo party, apparently holds the land rights title, the ‘DUAT’, for the land plot where the ‘Feira Recreativa da Juventude’, commonly known as the ‘Mercado dos Bombeiros’, takes place.

For more than two decades, this plot of land has been used by around 3,000 vendors who pay fees to the municipality, which in turn has a memorandum of understanding with OJM for the sharing of these revenues.

Many traders even have DUAT titles themselves for the use of defined plots within the market, some even with a license for a period of 50 years, according to documents we [O País] have seen.

However, on the 18th of January, the OJM issued a statement saying that, starting from the 1st of February, work on a general re-qualification will begin, and no alternative space is envisaged for those expecting to develop commercial activity.

“We are here to face an inexplicable situation, because we have not heard any restructuring of this market explained, at any time,” Danilo Domingos, one of the members of the sellers’ committee, complains.

“We have been using the market for over 25 years, we have invested in it, but we have received this unfortunate news that we have to leave the market because there is an investor who intends to exploit it and the market will be re-qualified,” adds Eliseu Carlos Manuel, another of the market vendors.

The provincial secretary of the OJM in Nampula, Mundefa Augusto Mundefa, clarified publicly that this was not an expropriation, but a re-qualification, and in the end everyone would be ‘re-integrated’.

“The re qualification of the OJM Fair does not imply the withdrawal of traders. They will sell again, but in an organised manner. That is the project. As long as they sell, and earn something, we as the OJM also benefit, because the space will provide for the construction of our headquarters,” he explained.

The re-qualification work is expected to end in November 2022.

Source: O País