Mozambique: Health and Education badly hit by violence – Watch

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Mozambique: Health and Education badly hit by violence – Watch

4:51 CAT | 07 Aug 2020

Photo: TVM

Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi said on Thursday that education and health are among the sectors worst hit by terrorism in the northern province of Cabo Delgado, and by the attacks waged by the self-styled “Renamo Military Junta” in the central provinces of Manica and Sofala.

Speaking at a meeting in the Manica provincial capital of Chimoio, where he presented the education and health challenges for the 2020-2024 period, Nyusi said that, since the start of the raids by islamist terrorists in Cabo Delgado, in October 2017, five teachers have been murdered, and 138 schools, catering for 61,789 pupils have been affected.

The terrorists had destroyed or severely damaged the Education, Youth and Technology Services in Muidumbe, Quissanga and Macomia districts.

In Manica, attacks by the Renamo Military Junta have affected nine schools, Nyusi said. In Gondola district alone, the education of 4,283 pupils has been damaged.

As for health care, the jihadist terrorists, the Military Junta, and natural disasters had affected 691 health units, said the President. In Cabo Delgado, of the 130 units affected, 18 were the victims of terrorist attack.

“This gratuitous violence is not only a violation of human rights that we should all condemn, but it is also a setback for the attempts to improved health care and education for the communities in the affected areas”, said Nyusi.

Turning to the response to the Covid-19 pandemic in the education sector, Nyusi said the government has designed a programme of interventions to be implemented in two phases. The purpose of the interventions is to ensure that schools are equipped with decent water supply and sanitation systems.

The first phase, the President said, will cover 667 secondary schools and 15 teacher training colleges, while the second phase will cover about 12,000 primary schools. The budget for this construction and rehabilitation work is 3.5 billion meticais (about 50 million US dollars).

It was “a historic landmark” to maintain in a single year so many schools “many of which had perhaps never had any maintenance or repair wince they were built”, added Nyusi.

As for the health sector, Nyusi urged his audience that, despite the pandemic, they should not lose sight of other problems, such as malaria, tuberculosis, diarrhoeal diseases and HIV/AIDS.

Source: AIM