Mozambique: No compensation for fish vendors, insists Comiche

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Mozambique: No compensation for fish vendors, insists Comiche

6:10 CAT | 26 Aug 2022

Image: Conselho Municipal de Maputo

The Mayor of Maputo, Eneas Comiche, has sacked the administrator of the Maputo fish market “to improve the tense environment there”, according to a report in Thursday’s issue of the independent daily “O Pais”.

But Comiche has refused to pay the vendors any compensation for the transfer of the market to new premises – which happened in 2016, without any complaints.

The old fish market was an informal market on land owned by the Maputo municipality. The Municipal Council decided to open a new, much cleaner and healthier fish market, overlooking the beach. To continue their business, the vendors had to apply for stalls in the new market. At the time, nobody suggested that this was unfair, or that the vendors should be compensated for moving from one market to another.

Twice earlier this month the vendors have held protests demanding compensation, for a move that happened years ago. Comiche stressed that there is nothing in the country’s legislation, or in the municipal by-laws, that would justify such compensation. The vendors wanted to march from the fish market to the municipal council offices, but the police prevented this demonstration.

The opposition parties in the Municipal Assembly are siding with the vendors, claiming that the fees charged for stalls in the fish market are exorbitant. At a meeting of the Assembly on Wednesday, the head of the Assembly group of the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), Augusto Mbasu, claimed that the market fees were another example of how expensive it has become to live in Maputo. “In Maputo, you pay for everything”, he protested.

The refusal to allow the vendors to march to the City Council was a violation of the Constitution and the law, he said. “This confirms that, in practice, we are an authoritarian state, disguised as a democratic one”, Mbasu alleged.

The deputies in the Assembly from the largest opposition party, Renamo, called for an open and frank dialogue between the municipality and its citizens. The head of the Renamo group, Paulo Chiburi, urged the municipality to give “humanized treatment” to the vendors

“We believe that a reflection based on an open and frank dialogue between the municipal authorities and the vendors is opportune, in order to create harmony and desirable peace”, Chiburi said.

But the leader of the Assembly group of the ruling Frelimo Party, Carlos Tivane, praised the efforts of the municipality in ensuring social assistance to vulnerable people, the improvement of access roads, and of sanitation.

Source: AIM