The promotion of police officers has been suspended until problems with the payment system is solved under the Single Wage Table (TSU) for the public administration.
According to the General Commander of the Mozambican Police (PRM), Bernardino Rafael, who was speaking on 7 August during a parade with the Border Guard Police, in Nangade district, in the northern province of Cabo Delgado, promotions and progressions cannot go ahead until the backlog of wage arrears is overcome.
Rafael said the same problem is behind the failure over the last two months to pay the wages of some members of the police force. This problem emerged in April when the government decided that all wage payments to members of the Defence and Security Forces (FDS), should be made by the Ministry of Economy and Finance and not by the Defence and Interior ministries.
It is thought that this change may have upset officials who were benefitting corruptly from the previous system. Nonetheless, Rafael denied that within the ranks of the PRM there are "ghost agents", who do not exist, but have been earning wages through various corrupt schemes. The denial comes after information was circulated that there were "ghost agents" and that they were probably being identified under the new salary payment system.
"This information is not the truth", said Rafael. "We know each other. If there is a ghost, he will be discovered. The PRM system is well structured. The argument that we are disorganised is false".
However, the Ministry of Economy and Finance clarified, at a Maputo press conference on 7 August, that the delay in paying wages to the FDS is due to the inconsistency of the data provided by the General Police Command and some units of the Mozambican Armed Forces (FADM).
The national director of Public Accounts, Manuel Matavel, explained that some of these inconsistencies included the repetition of names, the variation in the value of wages between what was paid previously and what should be paid now, and the lack of banking and tax data.
In April, a multi-sector team involving staff from the ministries of Economy and Finance, Defence, and the Interior began a reform of human resource management, including the processing and payment of wages. This reform is essentially aimed at providing the sectors with a tool to manage the life cycle of human resources from entering the armed forces or police until passage to the reserves, in order to improve payroll control.
According to Manuel Matavel, based on this process, 94 per cent of the staff reported by the Ministry of the Interior have already been registered, and data verification is underway for the remaining staff not yet registered in the system.
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To this end, the Ministry of Economy and Finance is working with the human resources department of the General Command and the National Criminal Investigation Service to prepare the data of each member, including the Personal Tax Identification Number (NUIT), the Bank Identification Number (NIB), the person's rank and the date of joining the defence and security forces.
As for delays in paying wages to staff in the public administration who are not members of the FDS, Matavele said these state functionaries had not yet provided "proof of life" - that is, they had not yet proven that they really exist.
He said that in July 99 per cent of the wages of state employees had been paid. Those who had not yet received their July wages either had not provided "proof of life", or had been recently admitted to the public administration, and were not yet enrolled in the computerised system.
