Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
30 October 2009
Nampula — The first significant violence arising from Mozambique's general elections, held on Wednesday, has occurred not over votes, or allegations of fraud, but over money.
In the northern city of Nampula, hundreds of polling station staff rioted on Thursday night, demanding payment of their allowances. A unit of the riot police used tear gas to disperse the protestors.
Some of the polling station workers told AIM they had seen several of their colleagues taken to hospital after suffering injuries in the clashes with the police, but there was no immediate confirmation of this from official sources.
Isabel Tirano, the Nampula provincial director of STAE (Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat), the electoral branch of the civil service, said she was not sure what had gone wrong - but in any case, payment has been decentralized, and it was the job of the Nampula city branch of STAE to pay the polling station staff.
She insisted that the provincial STAE directorate had transferred the necessary funds in due time to the city branch. The rules on payment are clear: as soon as polling station staff have returned all the results sheets, electoral registers and other voting materials to STAE, they must be paid.
"We don't know why Nampula city STAE decided to send the staff home without paying them", said Tirano. "We transferred the money before the start of voting".
Apparently the city STAE told the staff to come back on Friday, which caused outrage. Tirana pointed out that some of the staff have not been back to their homes since Monday.
But, as proved in many countries in the past, rioting often works. Faced with an angry crowd of polling station staff outside the site where the voting materials are being received, the city STAE changed its mind, and began paying the allowances.
Protests continued because some staff claimed they were being paid less than promised. Returning officers receive an allowance of 1,350 meticais (about 50 US dollars), polling station secretaries 1,200 meticais, and other staff 1.050 meticais, plus food during polling day.
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