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Mozambique: Maputo to Spend Over U.S. $1 Million to Repair Drainage System
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
6 February 2008
Posted to the web 6 February 2008
Maputo
Maputo City Council (CMCM) is spending over 26 million meticais (nearly 1.1 million USD) to replace metallic portholes of the drainage system that have been stolen by criminals.
According to the Councilor for Infrastructures, Mario Macarringue, CMCM is currently in the process of replacing stolen metallic portholes with others made of concrete, which are heavier and resistant to wear and less appealing to the criminals.
However, said Macarringue, "these are more expensive, meaning that the total cost of replacement is will also increase".
Macarringue deplored that the money that will be spent to replace these portholes "could be used to improve other infrastructures and roads which are claiming for maintenance works".
In Maputo, not in a distant past, most of the portholes were made of metal, but all of a sudden these vanished entirely in the city, posing a serious threat to the unwitting citizen. Some of the portholes are more than three meters deep.
These portholes are sold by the criminals as scrap metal, and to lesser extent are also used for the manufacture of a number of items such as stoves, kitchen utensils, among others.
Macarringue acknowledges, however, that even concrete portholes are also being targeted by the criminals, and sold in the informal markets in the Maputo for use as toilets seats for pit latrines.
CMCM suspects that members of organized crime are behind these crimes in the dead of the night, when the traffic is virtually nonexistent.
Statistics show that there were 4.000 metallic portholes in Maputo.
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In Mozambique the race for metallic items is being fuelled by the increasing demand of base metals in the international market. This activity is often supplied with stolen materials, particularly of the iron angle from power lines, electrical cables, among others.
The publicly owned companies such as Electricidade de Mocambique (EDM), the Telecomunicacoes de Mocambique (TDM), the Mozambique's Railway Company (CFM-EP) and the Mozambican Army are the main victims of this trade that is inflicting huge losses to the Mozambican economy.
Trade of scrap metal is also fueled by both Mozambican individuals and licensed companies who are willing to buy nearly everything that is metal, irrespective of its source, with the materials being immediately packed in containers for export markets.
good development
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| Copyright © 2008 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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