Rainy season: Red alert enables direct awards for equipment and services

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Rainy season: Red alert enables direct awards for equipment and services

6:08 CAT | 22 Feb 2023

Photo: O País

The government has decided to make the purchase of equipment and contracting services more flexible in the context of the floods plaguing the country. To this effect, it has decreed a ‘red alert’, as well as deploying teams led by ministers in different provinces.

The 2022/2023 rainy season is proving to be more devastating than expected. There are already more than 100,000 people affected and over 90 deaths. The situation earned the attention of the government at the sixth session of the Council of Ministers, which took place yesterday.

In a press conference, cabinet spokesperson Filimão Suazi announced that the government decided, as a result, to enact a ‘red alert’, an instrument that allows the executive more flexibility.

“During the period of the rainy season, it is likely that the government will need more means to involve more people in the work of saving or rescuing our population or other interventions,” Suazi explained.

This means that, while the government, in a normal situation, requires a public tender to hire and even a visa from the Administrative Tribunal, under a ‘red alert’, it is possible to bypass these steps and opt for direct award of contracts.

Furthermore, the Council of Ministers decided to send some of its members to the provinces, with the aim of monitoring the situation surrounding Cyclone Freddy, which is expected to affect provinces in all regions of the country.

Filimão Suazi did not speak of any new strategy regarding prior warnings to prevent people being caught off guard, relying on those that already exist, although these have failed a few times.

“The country has already equipped itself with means, through public radio and television, which transmit in the local languages, in which our populations communicate,” Suazi said. “Community radios also playS an important role in this context.”

New attacks do not threaten stability in Cabo Delgado

Recently, the province of Cabo Delgado has recorded more attacks, despite talk of an increasingly stable situation.

Suazi said that the attacks do not affect stability. In fact, “we never said that the last weapon of the terrorists had been taken away, but those that still remain are on the run”.

Proof that there is stability “are the recent visits by theChairman and CEO of TotalEnergies and the President of the Swiss Confederation, which could only take place in a context of stability”.

Source: O País