19 December 2007
Maputo — The repair and rebuilding of homes destroyed by the explosions of 22 March at the military arsenal in the Maputo neighbourhood of Malhazine will not be concluded by the end of this year as originally hoped.
Both the director of the government's Reconstruction Support Office (GAR), Cristina Matavele, and the mayor of Maputo, Eneas Comiche, had declared that all those houses completely destroyed in the explosions would be rebuilt by December, thus allowed the families affected to return to their homes for the Xmas and New Years holidays.
But when, on Tuesday, reporters from the daily paper "Noticias" visited some of the neighbourhoods most severely affected, they found the work well behind schedule with little or no chance of the houses being delivered to their owners by the end of the year.
This in Zimpeto, where 40 houses are being built to replace those destroyed, work is only well advanced on 15 of them, and has begun on a further three. Nothing at all has yet been done to build the other 18.
In the Magoanine neighbourhood some families displaced by the explosions are still living in tents, and complain that work on rebuilding their homes is "very slow".
There are complaints that, despite the government's declarations that the reconstruction should be treated as an emergency, the GAR has adopted bureaucratic procedures that slow things down. Some families say that, even after they signed all the necessary documents, it was months before work begn on rebuilding their homes.
Lucia Chongo, one of the Magoanine residents interviewed by "Noticias", accused the GAR of having no sense of urgency. "They're rebuilding as if this were something normal", she said. "My house, for instance, is far from complete. Even if they work 24 hours a day they won't finish it this year".
"We're not asking for much - we just want to see the work go a bit quicker", added Julieta Augusto, also of Magoanine.
Despite the paper's investigation on the ground, when "Noticias" contacted Matavele, she insisted that all houses that had been totally destroyed in the explosions would be rebuilt this year.
She thought residents might be confusing the homes that were destroyed with those that were only damaged. In the latter case, repairs would continue until April 2008.
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