Resources should benefit all Mozambicans, including future generations – Minister

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Resources should benefit all Mozambicans, including future generations – Minister

8:09 CAT | 26 Oct 2016

Noticias

Mozambique’s newly appointed Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy, Leticia Klemens, on Monday said that one of the greatest challenges she faces is to ensure that the country’s natural resources can benefit all Mozambicans, including future generations.

Speaking at a meeting with members of the Association of Mozambican Businesswomen (FEMME), Klemens she wanted to ensure that the resources “benefit us, as Mozambicans today, and also our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren”.

She also hoped to expand access to electricity, and insisted that she would work in accordance with the government’s economic and social plan “hoping to carry out successfully this thorny, but achievable, mission that has been entrusted to me”.

Klemens has come under attack in social media for her lack of any experience in mining or energy. But she told the Monday gathering that she had risen to become a member of the government “because I am competent”.

She thought that the appointment of a relatively young woman such as herself was a sign of the inclusive nature of the government

“Today I, Leticia Klemens, have been chosen to occupy the position of Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy”, she said. “Tomorrow it could be any one of the women present here, not only because we are women, but because we are competent”.

But there was little time for Klemens to explain her plans for the Ministry. The sports pavilion where the meeting was held was filled, not only with women entrepreneurs, but with hundreds of believers from various religious denominations. As a result, the gathering spent much of its time praying, singing and dancing.

Before her appointment to the government, Klemens was chairperson of the general meeting of the country’s largest commercial bank, the Millennium-BIM, and chairperson of FEMME.

Her former colleagues in FEMME lost no time in asking her to discriminate in favour of women. FEMME representative Clotilde Namburete asked the new minister to ensure that at least 30 per cent of the tenders launched by the Ministry are won by businesses headed by women.

Source: AIM