Limits set on repairs, maintenance and refurbishment of “senior leaders” residences – Mozambique

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Limits set on repairs, maintenance and refurbishment of “senior leaders” residences – Mozambique

2:40 CAT | 20 Aug 2019

With just months to go to a change-over of office holders, Filipe Nyusi’s executive decided to impose some objective limits and criteria “to be observed in repairing, maintaining and equipping official or duty-related residences,” with effect from the beginning of 2018. Maintenance expenditure cannot exceed 240 million meticais while repairs are limited to a maximum of 1.2 billion meticais.

Attentive readers of @Verdade will remember how, in 2011, Eduardo Mulembwe, who had ceased to be chairperson of the Assembly of the Republic, had to leave his official residence. The Office of Assistance to Former Presidents of the Republic and Attendance to the State’s Senior Officers bought him a house for 29 million meticais, but the highlight was the 2.6 million meticais for curtains and ornamentation, for just one of the thousands of official or post-related residences assigned to the so-called Superior Directors of the State or Holders of Governmental Position.

At each cycle of governance, new Senior State Leaders or Holders of Governmental Positions are appointed, and Mozambicans living in precarious housing have to pay, among various perks, for the new “decent housing” at prices which have so far obeyed no clear or transparent criteria.

However, forced by the discovery of Proindicus, Ematum and MAM’s illegal debts (to paraphrase Professor António Francisco, “they were the best thing that could have happened to Mozambique in recent years”), the Government has been forced into a certain “fiscal consolidation”, resulting in Ministerial Diploma 76/2019 which defines the amounts and criteria “to be observed in the repair, maintenance and equipping of official or post-related residences”.

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In the first place, it has been ascertained that “the repair of official or post-related residences is carried out every five years and should not exceed the limits” defined. Repair works are now subject to “prior authorisation by the Intermediate Units or Supervision of the State Assets Subsystem (…) after the evaluation of the property.” In addition, any “improvements to official or post-related residences which imply the alteration of or addition to the original structure of the property” have been banned.

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“Expenditure on the equipping of official residences or functions may not exceed 1,000,000.00 Mt, and is to be incurred only once every five years, requiring the replacement of movable property with prior assessment of their conservation status by the Supervisory or Intermediate Units of the State Assets Subsystem,” the Ministerial Diploma signed by Ministers Adriano Maleiane and João Machatine also determines.

With respect to senior managers of the state or holders of governmental positions and other beneficiaries of the right to housing “who have not been granted official or post-related residences due to insufficient state assets”, they are “entitled to compensation every 5 years. , for the repair, maintenance and equipping of their own residence.”

This Ministerial Diploma, published on July 31st but which has been applicable since January 1st, 2018, also defined that this compensation will be 500,000 meticais for Senior Managers of the State or Holders of Governmental Positions and 150,000 Meticais for the other beneficiaries of the right to state housing.

By Adérito Caldeira

Source: A Verdade