Mozambique: Authorities plan new Cabo Delgado villages – AIM report

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Mozambique: Authorities plan new Cabo Delgado villages – AIM report

8:24 CAT | 02 Dec 2020

FILE PHOTO: For illustration purposes only. [File photo: Folha de Maputo]

The Mozambican authorities are planning to build 100 new villages in the northern province of Cabo Delgado to resettle people displaced from their homes by the armed raids by islamist terrorists.

The Secretary of State for Cabo Delgado, Armindo Ngunga, cited by Radio Mozambique, said “we want to guarantee that the conditions for the population in these new villages are better than those that existed where they came from”.

He said the authorities would seek to ensure that housing, schools, hospitals and leisure spaces would be available in each new village, but did not give any budget or calendar for this work.

“So far, what we are doing is encouraging”, he said. “People have begun to build houses in the new regions where they find themselves”.

According to Prime Minister Carlos Agostinho do Rosario, speaking last week in the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, about half a million people have been displaced from their homes by the terrorist attacks.

The jihadists have set many villages on fire, leaving just charred ruins behind. When some people tried to return to Muidumbe district, where the defence and security forces recaptured the district capital in mid-November, they found a desolate scene.

According to a report in Tuesday’s issue of the independent newsheet “Mediafax”, the Muidumbe villages were not only attacked by terrorists, but were later looted by gangs of thieves. The defence and security forces could not garrison each village they took back from terrorist control, since they had to pursue the jihadists into other areas.

One local source told the paper he had seen ten houses which had escaped burning by the terrorist, only to be looted by criminals. Everything had been removed, even the doors.

One man in Muambala village told “Mediafax” “There’s nothing left in my house. They even stole the mosquito netting. I lost everything. They even took my stove and the charcoal. I just found documents, my certificates, that were on the table”.

The Tomás Nduda community radio station (named after a hero of the national liberation struggle) was vandalised, as were the offices of a secondary school in Muambala.

Some people, who had taken refuge in the neighbouring district of Mueda, tried to return to Muambala – but many went straight back to Mueda, when they saw the state of the village. Some, however, have decided to stay, and there are reports of many people living in the villages of Lutete, Namande and Miteda.

Source: AIM