Maputo — Maputo, 14 Feb (AIM) - The Mozambican relief agency, the National Disaster Management Institute (INGD), has denied any diversion of funds donated by the World Bank.
The accusation against the INGD is that, in 2020, the Disaster Management Fund (FGC), which is run by the INGD, used over 32.5 million dollars of World Bank money for purposes not envisaged in the Fund's Manual of Procedures.
These included more than 18 million meticais spent on purchasing vehicles, 13 million on water and sanitation infrastructures, and 1.5 million on building a bridge over the Muecate river in Nampula province.
In an exclusive interview granted on Monday to the independent television station STV, the INGC chairperson, Luisa Meque, admitted that this money has now been returned to the World Bank. This was a key condition for the Bank resuming its cooperation with the Disaster Fund.
"The money has been returned", said Meque. "Clearly this money has been returned. We don't have any problem with the World Bank. We are working normally".
"The World Bank never ceased being a partner of the INGD", she insisted. The World Bank had "drawn our attention" to the diversion, and that "is part of the work we always had".
"There is planning, there is monitoring, and under the monitoring, we see what is good and what is bad", said Meque. "Even during the period when we had to regularise the situation, we never ceased to have ties with the World Bank".
But Meque went much further, claiming that the use of the 18.5 million dollars was not really a diversion from the purposes of the FGC. The vehicles, for example, "were acquired and they are in the field. You can look for them and see that they are being used by our delegates. They are indeed being used for work purposes".
The INGD had decided to buy vehicles rather than hire them. "Hiring vehicles is more expensive than buying them for long term use. We thought we were saving money".
Meque insisted this was not "a deviation in the application of funds". She also argued that spending money on rehabilitating a bridge and building water supply system were also legitimate uses of FGD money.
On this issue, there is no doubt that Meque is wrong. The 2017 decree setting up the FGC states quite explicitly that "the acquisition of vehicles and civil construction work are not expenses eligible for financing from the Disaster Management Fund".
