Mozambique: Parliament postpones Local Authority Law revision

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Mozambique: Parliament postpones Local Authority Law revision

1:51 CAT | 13 Apr 2022

File photo: Luasa

The Mozambican parliament has postponed to Thursday the start of the debate on the review of the Basic Law on the Creation, Organisation and Functioning of Local Authorities to allow members time to analyse the opinions on the legal provision.

“The debate on the Basic Law on the Creation, Organisation and Functioning of Local Authorities [initially scheduled for today] will be postponed to Thursday for technical reasons,” said the speaker of parliament, Esperança Bias without specifying the reasons for the postponement.

But several members told Lusa that the rescheduling of the debate was due to the need to give more time to analyse the opinions of parliamentary committees on the proposed amendment of that legal provision.

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Lawmakers said they received the opinions on the matter this morning and had not yet sufficiently studied the documents produced by the committees.

In February, the president of the parliamentary Public Administration and Local Power Commission (CAPPL), Francisco Mucanheia, considered the revision of the said law urgent to adapt it to the current challenges imposed by the new organs of provincial decentralised governance.

“We note that Mozambicans defend updating the legislation on local authorities, which is an important basis for the entire decentralisation process,” Mucanheia said.

He said that the country was establishing more municipalities and extending decentralisation, a context that deepened democracy and potentially generated conflicts of powers between the various jurisdictions within the country.

“For example, we have heard a debate that there is a decree from the cabinet that allows local authorities to request the transfer of competencies to run schools and health units. This issue is still at the level of a decree, and we think that we will have to see how to bring the issue clearly when reviewing this law,” said Francisco Mucanheia.

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The clarification of management competencies of structures such as morgues, cemeteries and crematoriums, powers of the municipal police, competencies of the State representation bodies in the municipalities, the possibility of widening the composition of the management bodies of the municipalities and the social security of the members of the municipal assemblies are other matters that may be debated in the revision of the referred law.

Political and administrative decentralisation in Mozambique took a new leap in the 2019 general elections, when provincial governors were elected for the first time in the country’s history, no longer appointed by nomination by the president of Mozambique, and the figure of Secretary of State was introduced.

In the same framework, district administrators are also expected to be elected rather than appointed.

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Source: Lusa