GUEBUZA CALLS FOR IMPROVED PERFORMANCE IN JUSTICE

Mozambican President Armando Guebuza declared in Maputo on Thursday that improvements in the premises for key institutions in the country’s justice system should be reflected in improved performance.He was speaking after inaugurating new buildings for the Attorney-General’s Office and for the Central Office for the Fight against Corruption (GCCC), much larger and better equipped than their old premises.The buildings would provide better working conditions for the prosecution services, said Guebuza, and he wanted to see this translated into better performance from all the staff of the two institutions.The new buildings were built with a soft loan of 21.8 million US dollars from the Exim bank of China. The Chinese contractor, the CCM/Complant consortium, began the building work on 1 November 2008, and handed over the completed buildings on 28 November 2010, within the two year deadline.Guebuza said that the two buildings express the commitment of Mozambique and China to the struggle for the well-being of their two peoples, and give further substance to a relationship that dates back to China’s support for Mozambique’s war for independence from Portuguese colonial rule.For his part, the Chinese ambassador, Huang Sun Pu, said that, in addition to their striking architectural beauty, the two buildings are “an unequivocal symbol of the cooperation between the two countries in the fight against crime”. The larger building is the new headquarters for the Attorney-General’s Office. Conveniently sited, directly in front of the Supreme Court, it is 11 storeys high and has a car park that can hold 67 vehicles.The new GCCC offices are about five minutes walk away, in a three storey building overlooking the Bay of Maputo.