No Beira business will be sanctioned, but INAE needs justifications for anti-kidnappings’ shutdown – Watch

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No Beira business will be sanctioned, but INAE needs justifications for anti-kidnappings’ shutdown – Watch

3:37 CAT | 27 Oct 2020

Photo: Miramar

No Beira entrepreneurs will be sanctioned for having closed their business establishment without complying with the rules established for that purpose, the Inspector General of the National Inspection of Economic Activities, Maria Rita Freitas, told a press conference in Maputo yesterday.

In point are the fines issued by the Inspectorate of Economic Activities in Beira, Sofala province, to commercial establishments that closed their doors without notice.

Some commercial establishments in Beira shut down for three days (from Friday to Sunday), in protest at the wave of kidnappings that has been plaguing the country for almost 10 years, and as a way of putting pressure on the government and the judicial authorities to fight this type of crime. The promoters of the initiative warned that, if the kidnappings continued, this weekend’s action could be repeated.

In order to flush out the Beira businessmen involved, the INAE last Friday inspected 36 commercial establishments and fined 29 of them 500 minimum wages for failed to notify the authorities about the closure. The rest were working normally.

This created concern among the owners of the establishments about what they characterise as intimidation for having publicised the closure in the media.

At yesterday’s press conference, Rita Freitas clarified that nine of those sanctioned had indeed communicated news of the temporary closure, so only 20 had not complied with the formalities.

According to Freitas, the purpose of the notifications handed throughout INAE’s Beira operation is to come to understand, from the economic agents themselves, what dictated the closure of the establishments without prior notice.

“The holder of the economic activity license must notify the licensing entity of the temporary or permanent closure of any establishment at least 10 days in advance, establishing the suspension of the activity under the terms of paragraph b) of paragraph 2 of article 13 of the regulation licensing of commercial activity, approved by Decree 34/2013 of 02 August,” Freitas explained.

The INAE Inspector General admitted that every Mozambican citizen had the right to demonstrate, asserting that it was not the institution’s intention to interfere with that right, but “to ensure compliance with legality, in the exercise of all economic activity, throughout the national territory”.

Meanwhile, the leader of the Democratic Movement of Mozambique Daviz Simango had reacted at press conference, on Saturday, to the INAE operation carried out in Beira [on Friday].

An MDM communique quotes Simango, who is also Mayor of Beira, as saying: “It is clear that the INAE responds to acts of citizenship with intimidation and violence.”

“The National Inspection of Economic Activities (INAE), launches a notification campaign under Decree 34/2013 of 2 August, using paragraph g), number 2 of article 16 “sanctions” (unjustified closure of commercial establishments, causing disruption in the distribution and marketing of essential goods and products). This does not correspond to the truth, because the whole of society followed the press conference given by the organisers, clearly outlining the causes. These notifications are therefore strange, unfounded and void of professional ethics,” the MDM communique of October 24 reads.