22 February 2008
Maputo — Promoters of the "Holidays Developing the Districts" initiative say that red tape in Mozambican state institutions and delays in the processing of paper work by the Administrative Tribunal is undermining the allocation of qualified staff to the districts, thus prejudicing the goals of the initiative.
Under this initiative, final year students volunteer to work in rural district during their holidays, with the perspective of being employed there after they have graduated. Sending university-trained staff to the districts is in line with the government's declared policy of making the districts the poles for the country's development.
Helio Banze, a member of the coordinating team of the University Finalists Students Association, said that there are cases of graduates who were sent to work in the districts, but after six months they had not received any wages at all because their papers had not been processed.
This situation led some of them to give up those jobs and return to Maputo to seek other employment.
"Administrative red tape in the country is a very serious constraint for the new graduates in the districts. Many new graduates want to go to the districts, but the red tape is discouraging. We have cases of young people who work for a long time with no salaries, waiting for their papers to be processed. When nothing happened, they gave up", he said.
The problem with the Administrative Tribunal is that it must give its approval for all state contracts, and all recruitment of state employees. This procedure is supposed to guarantee transparency and avoid paying wages to people who do not exist.
In reality, the Administrative Tribunal works at a pace that would shame most snails, and the paper work for new state employees can wait for months before receiving the Tribunal's stamp of approval.
As a solution, the finalists suggest the creation of local Administrative Tribunals to deal with cases of technical staff allotted to the districts.
Banze stressed that district governments are missing good opportunities to recruit qualified staff, because the best time to do it is when they are still enthusiastic. "This is the right moment, because when the young students are still excited by the novelty and the new experience, that's the time to recruit them. After they return to Maputo and after graduation it becomes complicated to find them because then they involve themselves in other activities, they are called for interviews in other institutions and they sign contracts. We feel that district governments are missing a big opportunity to recruit these graduates", he said.
Despite all constraints, the "Holidays Developing the Districts" initiative has started bearing fruit, with 63 new graduates having taken up jobs in the districts.
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