Chapo wants Nampula to become the economic capital

Maputo, 20 Sep (AIM) – Daniel Chapo, the presidential candidate of Mozambique’s ruling Frelimo Party, on Thursday promised that he will turn the northern cities of Nampula and Nacala into the economic capitals of the country.

Cited by the independent television station STV, Chapo said he will reactivate the Nacala Special Economic Zone, and the Nacala Industrial Park. He believed that this will attract more investment to set up a variety of industries, which create jobs for young people.

Chapo also promised to expand the electricity network to neighbourhoods in Nampula city that are not yet on the national grid, and to complete a new Nampula general hospital.

The new hospital, he said, would relieve pressure on Nampula Central Hospital, which attends to seriously ill patients from all the northern provinces.

Among Chapo’s many other promises were to build more secondary schools, so as to reduce the distance pupils have to walk, and to improve the pupil-teacher ratio.

As has become the norm in this election campaign, Chapo did not say how much any of these projects would cost, or where he expects the money to come from.

Visiting the district of Ribaue the previous day, Chapo promised to revive a paralysed cotton ginning mill, and to build a new district hospital, so that seriously ill people no longer have to travel to Nampula city to seek treatment.

He boasted that his record as a district administrator and as a provincial governor showed that he knows how to create jobs. When he was administrator of the coastal district of Nacala-a-Velha, he created more than 5,000 jobs, he claimed, so that people no longer had to travel to Nampula Port to seek employment.

In the central province of Tete, the independent presidential candidate, Venancio Mondlane, promised to expand the electricity and drinking water networks.

Speaking at a rally in Macanga district, he said “you have a huge river that flows here, the Zambezi, but many families here don’t have drinking water in their homes. We want to install water treatment and distribution centres, so that the entire population of Tete has water in their houses”.

Mondlane accepted that not everybody would be able to pay for piped water – but any government he heads “will be obliged to give water to all poor and needy families”.

He noted that, although the country’s largest hydro-electric dam, at Cahora Bassa on the Zambezi, is in Tete, “most families here don’t have electricity in their houses”. He pledged that his government will change this situation.

(AIM)

Pf/ (428)