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The administrator of Macanga district, in the western Mozambican province of Tete, has illegally closed down the local community radio station, according to a report in Wednesday’s issue of the independent newsheet “Mediafax”.Faite ordered the closure of the Furancungo Plateau Community Radio on Monday, alleging that it was being mismanaged.He went to the radio personally on Monday morning, with four of his staff, and simply ordered it to stop broadcasting, claiming that it was being mismanaged by the community association that owns the radio.Faite said he had ordered the closure in order to restructure the radio and recover state property “because they are not complying with the norms of community radios in Mozambique”.He claimed that computers donated by UNESCO had been damaged, “there is no conservation of state property, there is no system for managing funds, there is no coordination with the local government, they are not serving the community”.Even if all these accusations were true, it would not make Faite’s behaviour any less illegal. But the radio’s coordinator, Vasco Captone, says they are not true He declared that the radio is functioning well and has an operational management committee. Captone believed that the true motivation for Faite’s behaviour is the outspoken way in which the radio has reported on the life of the district, which may not have been to the liking of the Macanga district government.Faite says that the district government is working “to restore order to the radio”, and he believed it would start broadcasting again next week.

The Mozambican police have arrested a Vietnamese citizen caught in possession of six rhinoceros horns.A spokesperson for the general command of the Mozambican police, Raul Freia, told reporters on Tuesday that the 58 year old man, named as Van Nga, was arrested last Thursday at the airport in the northern city of Pemba, as he was about to catch a plane. Freia did not give the man’s destination, but he was presumably intent on taking the horns to east Asia, where they are worth more than their weight in gold. Although rhino horns consist largely of keratin, the same protein found in human fingernails, they are believed to cure cancer and other diseases – a superstition that is driving the animals to the brink of extinction.This is the third time this year that Vietnamese citizens have been caught at Pemba airport trying to smuggle rhino horns out of the country. It is not clear whether the horns come from rhinos killed in Mozambique or in South Africa.Freia said that also last week, in the central city of Beira, the police detained a Chinese citizen, whom he named as T. Zuwo, who was trafficking a rare species of protected marine wildlife. Freia did not name the species in question. He said the Chinese tried unsuccessfully to bribe the arresting officer with a note of 500 meticais (about 17 US dollars)Freia said that during the disturbances in Maputo and the neighbouring city of Matola over last Thursday’s increase in bus fares the police arrested 39 people aged between 13 and 23. They were accused of damaging buses belonging to the Maputo municipal bus company (TPM), and to the Federation of Road Transport Operators (FEMATRO).

A breakdown in one Mozambican cement factory, rises in the international price of cement, and increased demand have all conspired to cause sharp rises in the domestic price of cement, according to the Minister of Industry and Trade, Armando Inroga.He was speaking in the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, on Wednesday in response to a question from the main opposition party, Renamo, which asked why the government had not intervened to prevent a situation whereby a 50 kilo sack of cement is sold for less than 250 meticais (8.3 US dollars) in some parts of the country, but for 600 meticais in others. Inroga replied that national cement production had reached a peak of 147,929 tonnes in August, but the following month fell by 15.3 per cent, to 125,291 tonnes, because of a breakdown in one of the six cement factories.Imports of cement also fell, from 39.155 tonnes in August to 21,671 tonnes in September, because of increased world market prices. Major infrastructure projects in northern and central Mozambique (such as the new bridge over the Zambezi in Tete and the international airport under construction in Nacala) had increased the demand for cement. The factories prioritised supplying the large projects with cement, said Inroga, so not much was left over for the retail market.He said that measures are under way to eliminate the shortage of cement. 11 new cement plants are at various stages of construction in the south and centre of the country. The largest factory of all, with the capacity to produce 500,000 tonnes a year, should enter production in June 2013, and by that time the country should have a total production capacity of 740,000 tonnes a year.Imports of cement are being stepped up, with orders for 54,000 tonnes from abroad, said the Minister. Of this amount, 5,000 tonnes is for the south of the country, 18,500 tonnes for the central provinces, and 30,500 tonnes for the north.Inroga added that his ministry will continue to send inspectors to check on the cement factories and on the main wholesalers and retailers.

At the same question and answer session, Education Minister Augusto Jone denied a habitual opposition claim that teachers’ wages are paid late. The government pays the wages regularly and on time, he insisted. The problem is that not all Mozambican districts have banks. The wages are deposited in one of the commercial banks – but district education officials may have to drive a long distance into another, or to the provincial capital to pick up the wages for the teachers in their district.He admitted that there are delays in paying overtime, because of mechanisms instituted to ensure that claims for overtime are genuine, and that no fraud takes place. This involves brigades from the provincial directorates of finance and of education checking how many hours teachers work in each school.“It is in the interest of the government that this process should be speeded up so that teachers who have worked proven overtime are paid properly”, said Jone. “The inspection should not penalize honest and dedicated teachers, who are the majority”.Renamo also demanded to know why there are not enough desks for pupils and teachers in Mozambican schools. Jone blamed this essentially on financial constraints. He said there are 760,075 desks in primary and secondary schools, but a further million are needed, 90 per cent of them for primary schools. He put the total cost of purchasing a million desks at 5.3 billion meticais (about 177 million US dollars), which is more than 20 per cent of the annual budget for the entire education sector.The 2013 budget, due to be discussed by the Assembly in December, includes a sum of 415 million meticais for the purchase of about 100,000 school desks.

Eight miners died last Friday when an illegal gold mine collapsed in Macossa district, in the central Mozambican province of Manica. According to a statement issued on Tuesday by the Ministry of Mineral Resources, the collapse occurred in the area of Kasse, where about 300 miners were digging illegally for gold.The Provincial Directorate of Mineral Resources, in coordination with the Macossa district authorities, investigated the causes of the accident, and concluded that the miners had disobeyed instructions given by a government team that had visited the area.The team consisted of the district administrator, the local police commander and attorney, directors of the security service (SISE) and of the district economic activities services (SDAE), as well as mineral resources staff. They told the miners to stop digging – an instruction that was disregarded with tragic consequences.The team gave their instructions, not only because the miners had no authorisation, but because Kasse is within an area of environmental conservation, where no mining activity is allowed, and because the erosion was such that a collapse of the mining shaft in the near future was all too probable.The man behind the illegal mining, Alvaro Mussage, holds a mining marketing operator card. This form of licence only entitles its holder to sell minerals, not to mine them. Since he violated the condition of his licence, Mussage has been ordered to bear the costs of the funerals of the dead miners. The Ministry did not say whether Mussage will face any criminal proceedings. The non-governmental organisation Environmental Justice (JA) has urged the government to exercise greater control over artisanal mining, in order to save lives and avoid the pillaging of the country’s natural resources. JA estimates that about 30,000 Mozambican and foreign citizens are involved in artisanal mining, under extremely dangerous conditions, in the districts of Manica, Macossa, Sussundenga, Barue and Guro. 

Mozambique’s Minister of Labour, Helena Taipo, has cancelled the work permits of two Indian citizens, Manoj Kumar Pandey and Ram Many Pandey, with immediate effect, according to a Tuesday press release from the Labour Ministry.The two men were the director of human resources and the coordinator of operations of the company MGC, which has been subcontracted by the Indian company Jindal Steel and Power for work on its coal mining concession in Changara district, in the western province of Tete. The two Indians are accused of repeated violations of the Labour Law and of the Mozambican constitution. According to the Ministry’s release they mistreated and insulted the 250 Mozambicans working at the company. They also made “false promises” to the Mozambican workers, and failed to provide them with work contracts and with protective equipment.No record was kept of overtime worked, and neither the company nor its workers were registered with the National Social Security Institute (INSS). Furthermore, the company did not provide any clean drinking water for its workers.The behaviour of the MGC management led to a strike last week. This seems to have alerted the Ministry to the seriousness of the problems, which it attributed to “the lack of dialogue and the arrogant character of the managers”.The two Indians even denied access to the company premises to the brigades sent by the provincial government and the police who were attempting to reach a solution to the workers’ grievances.