
FRELIMO/Chapo em Campanha eleitoral. Namaacha. Foto de Ferhat Momade
Maputo, 27 Sep (AIM) – Daniel Chapo, the presidential candidate of Mozambique’s ruling Frelimo Party, on Thursday promised to solve the problem of the delays in the arrival of school text books.
Speaking at a meeting in Maputo city with academics, and education and health professionals, Chapo said the problem would be solved through “economic sovereignty” – by which he seemed to mean challenging the diktats imposed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
He admitted that public policies have not been implemented as the government would like because of the demands from “foreign partners”. Chapo said these “partners” wanted policies that could make it impossible to meet the objectives outlined by Frelimo.
The school books, he said, could easily be printed inside Mozambique. Sociedade de Noticias, the company that produces the Maputo daily paper “Noticias”, has a modern press with plenty of capacity for printing school books.
“But for this, we have to have our own money”, said Chapo. “When the money is owned by someone else, he says where the books should be printed. That is why I have always said that you don’t implement education or health policies with other people’s money”.
Because of World Bank rules, the Mozambican school text books are printed thousands of kilometres away, in India. This is regarded as one of the reasons for the mistakes made in printing the books, and for the long delays in their arrival in Mozambique.
During the meeting, participants urged that any future government should exempt key public services, such as schools, health units and police stations, from paying for the electricity and water they consume.
The chairperson of the Medical Association of Mozambique (AMM), which represents the country’ doctors, Napoleao Viola, said the government resulting from the October elections should punish with greater severity corruption in the health service.
He believed this could stop the theft of medicines from the health units. “When a health worker knows that, if he steals medicines, he will be punished, then he will certainly stop stealing”, claimed Viola.
(AIM)
Ac/pf (350)