MDM and Frelimo fight over classroom roll-out in Beira, Mozambique

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MDM and Frelimo fight over classroom roll-out in Beira, Mozambique

3:08 CAT | 17 Feb 2016

DW Moçambique (File photo)

Beira city council and the district government of Sofala province in central Mozambique are again at loggerheads.

When MDM mayor of Beira Daviz Simango earlier this month opened three schools built with local authority and partners’ funding of this year, Frelimo district government’s João Oliveira promptly called the press to cancel Simango’s roll-out and announce his own.

“The president of the municipal council has the right to open anything that belongs to him. But in this case, the classrooms belong to the state and the mayor is not the state,” Oliveira said. Oliveira also presented district government documentation authorizing the work in the schools.

In Beira, the squabble between the MDM and Frelimo has lasted for more than two years, since the provincial administration proposed rationalising the boundaries within Mozambique’s second largest city from 26 down to eight residential neighbourhoods.

The municipal council’s response was not long in coming.

“The paperwork that the district showed could only be used to delay the work,” said Beira councillor Jose Manuel.

“We know that education services are not yet in the hands of the city council, but the whole initiative was generated by the community, the secretary and the school principal, together with the municipal council. The district only came on board later, to formalize what we would do.”

Manuel added that the local authority carried out the works within its social responsibility ambit. He also accused Frelimo of punishing the neighbourhoods where the renovated schools are for not supporting the ruling party in Mozambique.

Source: Deutsche Welle Moçambique