Mozambique: Election bodies have received 72% of the €284 million in funding needed for polls to open – STAE

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Mozambique: Election bodies have received 72% of the €284 million in funding needed for polls to open – STAE

4:25 CAT | 08 Oct 2024

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FILE - For illustration purposes only. [File photo: MzNews]

Mozambican electoral bodies have received 72% of the €284 million budgeted for Wednesday’s general elections, and all the material needed for the vote is in the final stages of distribution, an official source told Lusa on Monday.

“So far, the information I can provide is that, yes [conditions have been created for voting]. All provinces have already received the material and have also distributed it to the districts,” spokesperson for the Technical Secretariat for Electoral Administration (STAE) Regina Matsinhe told Lusa in an interview.

According to each province’s plans for distributing the material, she added that, in the process of distributing the last of the electoral material, “priority” will be given in this final phase to the districts “that are further away and so on”.

“Conditions are guaranteed, yes. The material is already there, what we consider the stationary material has been distributed, we are talking about the ballot boxes, we are talking about the booths and we are talking about the metal suitcases, which are used for storing the material, that has already been distributed some time ago,” she said.

The remaining material, produced in South Africa, is also already in the country, and was delivered to the last provinces, in the south of Mozambique, on Saturday.

“Everything has been taken care of to ensure that the polling stations can open at 7:00 a.m. on the 9th [Wednesday] without any problems,” the STAE spokesperson said.

The current round of elections was budgeted by the electoral bodies at 19.933 million meticais (€284 million), which was delivered by the government in stages.

“It is common knowledge that we have been receiving the amounts as they became available. As of Friday, the information we had is that 72% of these funds had already been made available. There is already a budget to pay the polling station staff, and the provinces have already received them,” Matsinhe said.

Matsinhe guaranteed that, in Cabo Delgado, which has been experiencing a climate of insecurity for seven years caused by attacks by terrorist groups, conditions for Wednesday’s vote had, in terms of equipment and security, been created.

“So far I have no information that demonstrates the contrary. The information I have is that conditions are in place for the election to take place under equal circumstances throughout the national territory,” she stressed.

Source: Lusa