Boundaries Of New Municipalities Awaiting Approval

Boundaries Of New Municipalities Awaiting Approval

Maputo, 1 Feb (AIM) – The Mozambican Ministry of State Administration has drawn up the territorial boundaries of the 12 new municipalities approved last year by the country’s parliament, the Assembly of the Republic – but nobody outside the government seems to know what those boundaries are.

The question arose at a meeting in Maputo on Tuesday between the National Elections Commission (CNE), its executive body, the Electoral Administration Technical Secretariat (STAE), and representatives of political parties.

The parties complain that they cannot monitor the voter registration in the new municipalities, if they do not know what areas they cover – where the municipality begins and ends.

Even STAE does not officially know the new municipal boundaries. The representative of the government on the CNE, Zaria Amisse, told the meeting “The Ministry of State Administration and the Public Service, has a directorate, the National Directorate of Territorial Organisation, which has already demarcated the boundaries of all the new municipalities”.

But the boundaries will not be made public until the demarcation has been submitted to, and approved by, the Council of Ministers (Cabinet). Amisse was sure that this will occur in the near future.

“The demarcation has been concluded”, she said. “Very soon this will be approved, and the boundaries of each new municipality will be established by decree”.

A pilot voter registration is due to begin on Wednesday and run until 20 February. It is intended to test the equipment that will be used in the definitive municipal voter registration, scheduled to begin in April.

STAE General Director Lolo Correia assured the meeting that the possibility of fraud during the pilot registration does not arise, because all the data collected will be erased before the definitive registration.

So as not to confuse the voters, the pilot registration will take place in nine districts where there are no municipalities, and hence no municipal elections. These districts are: Magude, Moamba and Matutuine (Maputo province); Mogovolas, Murrupula and Meconta (Nampula); and Mossurize, Macate and Vanduzi (Manica).
(AIM)
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