
Maputo, 15 Sep (AIM) – Mozambique’s National Elections Commission (CNE) needs more than 2,700 rooms to train about 187,000 polling station staff (MMVs) who will be deployed during the presidential, parliamentary and provincial elections scheduled for 9 October.
The training of the MMVs is due to begin on 21 September, and the CNE will pay more than 76 million meticais (about 1.2 million US dollars) to hire the rooms (mostly classrooms).
Interviewed by the independent television station STV, CNE member Alice Banze said the payment is “derisory” given the real cost of the rooms.
“We are talking about 11 provinces and more than 165 districts, and each room is going to cost 2,000 meticais a day”, she said. “This is a tiny sum for hiring a room”.
The sums involved are “symbolic”, said Banze, “if we compare how much it would cost to hire rooms in hotels”. She believed the average cost of a hotel room would be 7,000 meticais a say.
The training, first of provincial trainers and now of the MMVs, is taking a heavy toll on the Mozambican education system.
The training of the provincial trainers, which began on 12 September and is due to end next Tuesday, mostly involved teachers and school directors, which means that in many schools classes were postponed or cancelled.
The anti-corruption NGO, the Centre for Public Integrity (CIP), found that in certain districts (such as Nacala-a-Velha, in Nampula province) schools were completely abandoned. Some teachers were taking part in the training course while others were participating, completely illegally, in the election campaign of the ruling Frelimo Party.
Most of the teachers will also be MMVs, and their training runs from 24 September to 4 October. Many thousands of school students will be deprived of their education over this period.
(AIM)
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