Listen: The President’s “harsh words” in Inhambane – analysts

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Listen: The President’s “harsh words” in Inhambane – analysts

1:27 CAT | 28 Jul 2020

Photo: Noticias

President of Mozambique Filipe Nyusi last Friday refused to inaugurate a technical school in Inhambane on the grounds of poor workmanship.

The Eduardo Mondlane Industrial and Commercial Institute was on the list of inaugurations that President Nyusi was to undertake, but he refused to go ahead, after learning that the bathrooms had not even been covered.

“It is not worthy of being inaugurated.We may come back later. (…) We do not accept [refuse] the works. As an educational measure,” President Nyusi said.

ALSO READ: Mozambique: President refuses to inaugurate Inhambane commercial institute due .to bad workmanship

Nyusi’s attitude received both positive and negative appreciation.

“I found the head of state’s tone very severe. He has a very soft voice, but this time he was very harsh in Inhanbane, And I think it was the right tone,” lawyer and commentator Tomás Vieira Mario said, pointing out that “work must be carried out to the required quality”.

The leader of the NGO Sekelekane said that contractors must ensure quality, if only to avoid suspicion. “There are already those who disagree with work [on schools] being allocated by direct award, without a public tender. So, to tackle these suspicions, the quality must be there,” explains. Vieira Mário.

But researcher Adriano Nuvunga says Filipe Nyusi’s attitude rode rough-shod over the public administration. In his opinion, “the President of the Republic should not be overseeing work and deciding whether to inaugurate it or not”.

“It is a serious violation on the part of the President of the Republic, who is disqualifying the institutions, and may actually be trampling on the principles of public administration in order to save his honour,” Nuvunga states.

The rehabilitation of school toilets is among the measures identified by the government as essential to the resumption of classes – another situation that finds no easy consensus in the country.

Nuvunga says that the failure of the Inhambane work to meet the president’s approval is yet another example that conditions for resuming classes do not as yet exist.

“We should not be going back to school; there are no conditions for it. We have to accept that the school year is lost, and that Mozambique does not have the money to create the necessary conditions,” the researcher, who heads the Centre for Democracy and Development [CDD-Moçambique], says.

Source: Voa Portugues