Corruption worsens impact of disasters – Watch

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Corruption worsens impact of disasters – Watch

8:19 CAT | 19 Feb 2018

TVM

Mozambican Prime Minister Carlos Agostinho do Rosario on Friday recognized that some of the country’s social and economic infrastructures do not resist natural disasters because the contractors who won the building contracts did so through schemes of corruption.

“We want to work so that state-owned buildings do not continually have to be rebuilt, as happens now”, he said, addressing the Disaster Management Technical Council (CTGC) in the northern province of Niassa, on the second day of a working visit to that province.

When contracts were arranged through corruption, the Prime Minister said, “this culminates in schools and health centres that are badly built. The result is buildings that are easily destroyed by rain and wind. The roofs even fly off, while buildings built in the 1950s remain intact”.

He noted that, because of its geographical location, Mozambican is prone to natural disasters, “and so we must work for our country to become resilient to them”.

But while work was under way to ensure the future resilience of infrastructures, conditions must be established for immediate assistance to people suffering from the effects of disasters, he insisted.

The Niassa delegation of the country’s relief agency, the National Disaster Management Institute (INGC), told him that during the present rainy season 449 families in the province had lost their homes. 176 of these had already received construction kits to build new homes, but kits for the others are still being loaded onto trucks in Maputo. Currently these families are being sheltered by relatives and friends.

Rosario was also told that emergency interventions were made along 12 stretches of Niassa roads so that vehicles could use them again. Measures had also been taken to repair some of the 24 classrooms affected by storms earlier in the month.