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Mozambique: Pandemic aid money ‘was channelled to elites not to the people’ – NGO

The director of the Centre for Democracy and Development NGO said on Wednesday that the aid Mozambique received to fight the pandemic was channelled to the elites and not to the population, perpetuating the “governance of corruption”.

“The funds made available by multilateral entities to help fight the pandemic should go to social protection, revitalisation of the economy and macroeconomic stabilisation, but the priorities were changed and corruptly Mozambique continued with the same pattern of governance of corruption, handing over the money to the elites, to big companies, instead of giving it to families,” said Adriano Nuvunga.

The head of the Mozambican NGO was speaking at an online conference on “The Debt Pandemic: What Impacts for Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau and Mozambique?

At the conference, organised by the Association for Cooperation amongst Peoples (ACEP) and the Portuguese Platform of non-governmental development organisations (NGDOs), the activist said that this use of funds “is consistent with the pattern of the last 30 years, in which public resources are used to enrich elites and impoverish the people, and has become consolidated even in times of crisis.

In his opinion, “Mozambique missed the opportunity because it maintained the pattern of marginalisation of the people and has perpetuated the opportunism of the elites.

The country, he added, already had the health sector “in semi-collapse even before the pandemic and lost the capacity to recover and generate revenue, as Covid-19 crippled not only governance, but also the productive capacity of society.”

Mozambique counts 839 deaths and 71,165 cases of Covid-19.

La source: https://clubofmozambique.com/news/mozambique-pandemic-aid-money-was-channelled-to-elites-not-to-the-people-ngo-194207/