8 May 2008
Maputo — The key priorities for expanding rural access to clean drinking water are the provinces of Nampula and Zambezia, where about 40 per cent of the Mozambican population lives, declared the Minister of Public Works, Felicio Zacarias, on Thursday.
Speaking in the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, on the second day of a question and answer session between the deputies and the government, Zacarias said that, in order to raise the percentage of the rural population with access to clean water from the 2007 figure of 48.5 per cent to the government's target of 55 per cent by the end of 2009, "we shall build or rehabilitate 3,265 water sources, which will benefit a further 1.6 million people".
This year, he added, about 1,500 sources (wells or boreholes) will be built, 355 of them in Nampula, and 228 in Zambezia. "Our greatest effort will continue to be aimed at increasing coverage in these two provinces", he said.
Asked about the problems posed to farmers by wild animals, Agriculture Minister Soares Nhaca said that 84 "community hunters" have been trained to chase away or kill "problem animals".
The most serious threat to human life from any large animal is posed by crocodiles. Nhaca said this threat was being dealt with by collecting 100,000 crocodile eggs, and killing 500 adult crocodiles a year. The government also hoped to reduce contact between people and crocodiles by siting water sources away from rivers.
Fernando Maingue, a deputy from the former rebel movement Renamo, denounced the government's biofuel policy. He claimed that the shrub jatropha, which is a source of biodiesel, is being cultivated to the detriment of food crops, but the government has been unable to purchase jatropha from the farmers who grow it. He cited a farmer in the northern province of Niassa who had supposedly been unable to sell his jatropha.
Nhaca retorted that "right now there is no jatropha that hasn't got a market, and all jatropha produced in Niassa has been sold". He had spoken personally with the farmer mentioned by Maingue, and the claims of the Renamo deputy were simply untrue.
Interior Minister Jose Pacheco admitted that there had been a rise in crime between 2006 and 2007, but claimed that there had been a decline in violent crime, and improved police response to crime.
He claimed that so far this year the police have dismantled 46 criminal gangs and destroyed two arms caches. They had seized 91 firearms and over 40,000 rounds of ammunition.
Among the stolen property recovered, added Pacheco, were 150 vehicles, 52 motor-bikes, 26 bicycles, 156 mobile phones, and 125 head of cattle.
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