Mozambique: Assembly approves budget for 2024 - AIM report
Map: DW
It is increasingly evident that cohabitation will be difficult for two provincial administration bodies. With different competencies on paper, there are in practice concerned with only one thing: governing the province.
After the Commander of the High Individuality Protection Unit (UPAI), Benigno Jonasse, instructing the commanders of the sub-units of that Police of the Republic of Mozambique (PRM) branch to remove “all the security” from the Governors in favour of the Secretaries of State, next it was the Government’s turn to order Governors (elected) and Secretaries of State (appointed) to “stop” working, with a view to organising the “house”.
An official letter No. 08 / MAEFP / 214 / GM / DNAL / 2020, dated January 28, 2020 and signed by the incumbent Minister, Ana Comoane, states: “The Secretary of State in the Province, the Governor of the Province and the State Secretary in the City of Maputo must not take structural decisions [without revealing which ones] until the organic structures of the State Representation Council and the Provincial Executive Council are approved, and must still wait for the work to be carried out by the Inter-ministerial Commission created.”
According to the aforementioned ministerial letter, the referred Commission was constituted last Tuesday, January 28, during the II Ordinary Session of the Council of Ministers, being constituted by the Ministries of State Administration and Civil Service (which presides over it); Economics and Finance; Public Works, Housing and Water Resources; of the Interior; and of Justice, Constitutional and Religious Affairs. This Commission aims to distribute the human, patrimonial and financial resources of the defunct Government of the Province among the Provincial Decentralised Governance and State Representation Bodies in the province.
The document does not indicate any date for the completion of the work, a fact that further fuels the debate around the potential conflicts of interest which may arise during the implementation of the current decentralization model.
One of the cases that already creating controversy is the visit made by the Secretary of State in the province of Zambézia, Judith Emília Faria, to families affected by the floods in Namacurra, on Monday, hours after her official introduction to the population. Faria reportedly managed to be more of a “protagonist” than the Governor of the Province, Pio Matos, who has not yet visited any district affected by the floods.
Another situation which constitutes a political-territorial dispute took place in the province of Nampula, where the former Provincial Director of Education in Nampula, Judith Faria, signed, on January 24 (moments before taking office as Secretary of State in Zambézia), two separate invitations for the media, covering the opening ceremonies of the academic year, this Friday.
One invitation states that the opening ceremony of the academic year, in the province of Nampula, will be conducted by Mety Gondola, Secretary of State, at Muchico Secondary School and the other that it will be conducted by the Governor of the Province, Manuel Rodrigues, at the EPC of Napueia.
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