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Mozambique: Government submitting new law on disaster risk management and reduction
4:23 CAT | 05 Aug 2020
File photo: Folha de Maputo
The Mozambican Council of Ministers will propose a new law on disaster risk management and reduction to the Assembly of the Republic, following the end of the state of emergency enacted to deal with Covid-19, the government has announced.
Speaking during the press conference after Tuesday’s session of the Council of Ministers in Maputo, cabinet spokesman Filimão Suaze said the proposal would strengthen the disaster risk management and reduction system, taking into account the country’s permanent exposure to natural disasters and emergencies.
The new legal provision to be submitted to the Assembly of the Republic, which repeals Law No. 15/2014, and will also “capitalise on the experiences of disaster management and lessons [learned] during the observance of the state of emergency” and include matters related to “human and infrastructure resilience”, Suaze added.
The Council of Ministers spokesman did not indicate whether the diploma would replace the state of emergency that ended on July 29, after 120 days.
The Constitution of the Republic requires that any state of emergency in Mozambique be approved for a maximum of 30 days, and extended three times only for the same period.
In his address to the nation on the last day of the state of emergency (Wednesday), which had by then been extended for the maximum three times, President Filipe Nyusi asked that the Covid-19 restrictions contained therein continue to be observed, promising to announce next steps soon thereafter.
Suaze said that the Mozambican government had managed to achieve the main goal of the state of emergency in the last four months, that of avoiding pressure on the health system.
“By taking timely measures, we were able to ‘flatten the curve’ of the number of contaminations and delay the onset of fatalities in the country,” Swaze said.
Despite the positive overall balance, the country could not abandon the measures adopted under the state of emergency, he cautioned.
“Let us not just look at the issue of the end of the emergency period, we have to focus more on the state of consciousness, which must be permanent. The greatest value that is sought to safeguard is the life of all of us,” he declared.
Mozambique, which has lived under a state of emergency for the past four months, has recorded a total of 2,029 positive cases of Covid-19, 15 deaths and 765 people reported to have recovered, according to the latest updates.
The country has tested 62,373 suspected cases since the announcement of the first confirmed case of Covid-19 (on March 22), tracking more than 1.6 million people.
By Tuesday, the majority of active cases were in Maputo City and Cabo Delgado province, with 332 and 257 respectively, followed by Maputo province, with 261, and Nampula province, with 200 infections.
The remaining seven provinces in the country register less than 40 cases.
A report on the four months of state of emergency was sent to parliament, which analysed and approved the document on Tuesday, with votes against by the two opposition parties in the Assembly of the Republic: the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo) and the Democratic Movement of Mozambique (MDM).
The Covid-19 pandemic has already claimed more than 694,000 lives and infected more than 18.3 million people in 196 countries and territories, according to a report by the French agency AFP.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected in late December in Wuhan, a city in central China.
Source: Lusa
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