OJM SECRETARIAT ACCUSED OF MISUSE OF FUNDS

The National Jurisdictional Council of the Mozambican Youth Organisation (OJM), the youth affiliate of the ruling Frelimo Party, has denounced “misuse of funds, mismanagement of assets, abuse of power, and violations of the statutes and directives”.The accusations are contained in the Jurisdictional Council’s report to the meeting of the OJM Central Committee held in the southern city of Xai-Xai last weekend. The report has been leaked and was published on Facebook on Tuesday.The report goes in some detail into financial abuses. It says that members of the OJM Secretariat “acquired five vehicles for their exclusive and personal benefit without planning and approval by the Central Committee while leaving aside activities of great political importance that had previously been approved”.There was no clue as to how these vehicles were acquired. No tender was held and the Jurisdictional Council was not notified about the acquisition.The Council complained that it had no vehicle of its own, which makes its work difficult, but the OJM General Secretary (Pedro Cossa) possesses three vehicles. The Council was also concerned that “the organisation’s vehicles are used by people foreign to the OJM, to the detriment of the organisation’s staff”.The Council noted that the report from the secretariat mentions loans and advance payments made by the OJM to its staff, with no indication of which staff members have benefitted and how the money is to be repaid. The Council regarded this as a “serious violation” since it is not the task of the OJM to lend money.The secretariat spent large sums on the Frelimo general election campaign last year, but did not indicate exactly what activities these funds paid for. It regarded the sum of 1.7 million meticais (about 50,000 US dollars) as “very large”, particularly since none of the OJM’s Provincial Jurisdictional Councils had mentioned at any time the outlay of money by the National Secretariat for election activities. The report also mentioned a sum of slightly more than 1.5 million meticais for air tickets and expenses, without any indication of whether this too was related to the election campaign.The Council, it said, “believes that the funds of the organization are being spent indiscriminately and without any convincing justification”. The expenditure made was “unreasonable”, and so the Council recommended that the Central Committee reject the accounts. It also called for an immediate audit.Such problems, the Council warned, not only impacted negatively on the OJM, but had implications for Frelimo itself.It feared that the current atmosphere inside the OJM “does not allow better cohesion and trust, or the achievement of tangible and desired results”.