Candidate Census trainers: Strikes breaking out across Mozambique – Watch

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Candidate Census trainers: Strikes breaking out across Mozambique – Watch

6:55 CAT | 06 Jul 2017

TVM / INE Nampula

Strikes are breaking out across Mozambique among people recruited to train census agents for the population census scheduled for August.

In at least Gaza, Sofala, Zambezia and Cabo Delgado provinces candidates applying for jobs as trainers have protested against poor living and working conditions and have demanded higher allowances, and better food and transport.

In the Zambezia district of Mocuba the candidate trainers, cited in the Maputo daily “Noticias”, complained that they had not been provided with anywhere appropriate to sleep. As a result some of them spent Sunday night inside the district government offices.

“Since we arrived on Sunday, we haven’t been given any meals and we have no information on our situation”, one of the candidates told Radio Mozambique. “Up until now there are still colleagues who have nowhere to sleep”.

The candidates said that attempts to obtain an explanation from Armando Terenha, the Zambezia provincial delegate of the National Statistics Institute (INE), which is organising the census, were fruitless.

In Beira, candidate trainers for Sofala province complained to the provincial governor, Helena Taipo, about their poor accommodation and meals. At the ceremony marking the official opening of the trainers’ course, around 400 candidates told Taipo that had not been paid their allowances yet, and were only receiving one, poorly cooked meal a day.

Taipo urged the course managers to set up decent conditions for the candidate trainers. If they needed anything else, then they should inform the provincial authorities.

It was the same story in Gaza, with 300 candidates complaining of poor accommodation and food.

The INE Gaza delegate, Hilario Mindzo, met with the group, and told them that the “administrative gaps” were because very little money had been allocated to Gaza for census preparation.

But the INE had been unaware of the accommodation problem, and his delegation promised to improve matters. The candidates accepted this promise and suspended their strike on Wednesday. But they told Mindzo they wanted their problems solved within 24 hours.

The INE regards the training of trainers as a crucial part of the preparations for the census, which is to be held from 1 to 15 August throughout the country.