18 February 2008
Maputo — Three community leaders have been arrested in Mopeia town, in the central Mozambican province of Zambezia, for charging money to people who wanted to be listed as victims of the current floods in order to receive foodstuffs and other support.
The fraud was uncovered when the Mozambican relief agency, the National Disasters Management Institute (INGC) and its partners found that the number of people listed to receive aid in that area suddenly ballooned from about 8,000 to 30,000.
The head of the Criminal Investigation Police (PIC) brigade investigating the case, Cesar Manuel, told reporters from the weekly paper "Domingo" that the arrested community leaders had ordered their subordinates in charge of listing the victims to include names of people who were not affected by the floods.
In exchange for this favour, every phoney flood victim would pay 50 meticais (about two US dollars) to the official drawing up the lists. That official turned the money over to the crooked community leaders, who paid their subordinates 100 meticais for each falsified list.
Figures from the local government show that there are 115,000 inhabitants in Mopeia district, and the INGC thought it impossible that 30,000 of them had been directly affected by the floods as the lists appeared to be claiming.
The police say that that they are using information provided by the detainees to launch an operation to arrest other people involved in this scheme in various parts of Mopeia.
Commenting on this case, the district administrator, Abrista Majuarte, said it is difficult to count the people really affected by the floods because people who were not affected have "infiltrated" the resettlement centres set up for the victims.
To try and solve this problem brigades were set up to register all families in the transit and resettlement centres, but Majuarte admitted that these brigades made the basic mistake of registering as new victims some families who had been registered as flood victims last year, had abandoned the centres and are now returning.
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