29 February 2008
Maputo — The Maputo city military recruitment centre has decided to extend this year's military registration period, which should end on Friday, into mid-March.
Under the Mozambican legislation on compulsory military service all young Mozambicans, of both sexes, are supposed to register in the year of their 18th birthday. The registration period is normally the first two months of the year.
The national registration target for 2008 is 201,000. The military seems unaware that there are over twice that many 18 year olds in Mozambique. Someone who turns 18 this year was seven at the time of the 1997 population census - and that census counted 459,450 seven year olds.
Maputo city was expected to register 50,000 people, but has fallen well short of this figure. About 43,000 people have registered in the capital, or 86 per cent of the target.
The director of the Maputo city recruitment centre, Freitas Norte, looked on the bright side and said that in recent weeks the number registering had grown. The army had thus decided to continue the registration for another couple of weeks, "to attend to those young people who, for whatever reason, have been unable to register so far".
But anyone who registers late will have to do so at the Recruitment Centre headquarters in central Maputo, since the recruitment offices in the neighbourhoods will be closed down.
Freitas Norte believed that the authorities might have to extend the registration in various other regions, particularly in the central provinces which have been badly hit by flooding,
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