3 April 2008
Maputo — Mozambique's ruling Frelimo Party has drawn up "a positive balance sheet" of the first three years of implementing the government's five year programme, based on the Frelimo election manifesto of 2004, according to the Frelimo Secretary for Propaganda and Mobilisation, Edson Macuacua.
The Frelimo Political Commission met on Wednesday with provincial governors, party first secretaries from the provinces, leaders of the Frelimo parliamentary group, and central committee heads of departments, to analyse progress since the party's victory in the December 2004 general election.
Addressing a Thursday press conference, Macuacua said the meeting had noted "significant advances", including improved quality in the services provided to citizens, and increasing the net primary school attendance rate to 94.1 per cent (which surpasses the government's target - it did not expect to reach a 90 per cent attendance rate until 2009).
Macuacua claimed that the once chronic problem of delays in paying wages to teachers and other public servants had been definitively solved. Similarly, the delays in distributing free school text books to pupils had been solved.
But this claim was contested by one reporter who pointed out that the class his daughter attended in a Maputo school had still not received the books. Despite this, Macuacua insisted that "the system has greatly improved".
He said that the decentralization of some of the state budget down to district level had resulted in increased food production, and had generated employment. But he was unable to quantify these gains - he could not say how much extra food had been grown and how many new jobs were created by the direct allocation of funds to the districts.
Other achievements included the acquisition of a majority stake in the Cahora Bassa dam on the Zambezi, the population census held successfully last year, and the rehabilitation of over 3,000 kilometres of roads.
In the area of health, Macuacua claimed there was a six per cent average annual increase in health activities. The maternal mortality rate had fallen from 182 per 100,000 live births in 2005 to 163 per 100,000 live births in 2007. The number of HIV-positive people receiving the life-prolonging anti-retroviral therapy had risen from 19,035 in 2005 to 88,211 in 2007. This means that the target for 2009, of 150,000 people on anti-retroviral drugs is within reach.
Macuacua said that by the end of 2004 only 50 of the country's 128 districts were electrified, but by the first quarter of 2008, a further 68 were receiving electricity. But under questioning he admitted that this did not mean they were all connected to the national grid. Macuacua's figures include districts that are still receiving power from expensive diesel-fired generators, and those where a few solar panels had been installed. These sources of power usually only benefit people living in the district capital.
Macuacua added that fixed telephones could now be used in 116 districts, and that the mobile phone network has reached 97 districts.
He admitted, however, that the government had faced serious constraints, including the floods and cyclones that had battered the country in 2007 and 2008, and the sharp rise in the world market price of oil and of grains, particularly wheat.
Nonetheless, the extent of the achievements over the past three years "shows that we are on the right path, which encourages us to face the challenges with firmness and conviction".
When reporters noted that Macuacua's summary of the meeting said nothing about either corruption or crime, he claimed that there had been advances in these areas too. He admitted there were times over the past three years when Maputo had been rocked by violent crime, but recently "there has been a significant improvement in the police response to crime".
As for corruption, Macuacua declared "we are satisfied at the way in which the fight against corruption is being waged. This forms part of our fight against poverty".
When asked how Frelimo could possibly be satisfied when not a single case of serious corruption has come to trial in the last three years, and when President Armando Guebuza felt obliged to sack Attorney-General Joaquim Madeira last year, a decision widely believed to be due to Madeira's failure to deal with corruption, Macuacua hastened to add "I don't mean that we don't believe that corruption exists. But we are attentive to it".
He claimed that in the education and health services, and in the police, the level of corruption has declined. Nowadays there were fewer reports of illicit charges in the schools or hospitals, and fewer bribes were being demanded. He claimed that the information Frelimo was receiving from the public confirmed that the scale of this petty corruption was lower than it had been a few years ago, but it was impossible to quantify this decline.
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