News

Mozambique's publicly-owned electricity company, EDM, has yielded to pressure and reconnected an illegally built neighbourhood in the northern city of Pemba to the grid.

Six administrators in the Mozambican health service in the northern province of Cabo Delgado have been arrested for the theft of about three million meticais (about 120,000 US dollars), reports Tuesday's issue of the Beira daily paper "Diario de Mocambique".

Work on building or rehabilitating five health units in the central Mozambican province of Zambezia is still incomplete, even though contracts with the contractor were signed in 2002 and 2003.

Mozambique's relief agency, the National Disasters Management Institute (INGC), has decided to transfer over 2,500 people at risk due to flooding on the lower Zambezi, to higher ground, reports Monday's issue of the Maputo daily "Noticias".

With little rainfall anywhere in southern Africa over the past 24 hours, the level of most of Mozambique's main rivers has continued to drop, according to the Saturday bulletin from the National Water Board (DNA).

Mozambique's Deputy Minister of the Interior, Jose Mandra, declared on Saturday that the skill and technique used to carry out recent crimes shows that there are many bandits infiltrated inside the Mozambican police force.

The flood on the Zambezi river in central Mozambique reached the district of Marromeu on Thursday.

For the second time in less than a week, unidentified gunmen have robbed a bank in central Maputo in broad daylight, meeting no resistance from the police or from the private security guards hired to protect the banks.

Heavy rains have continued to fall over the past 24 hours in central Mozambique, and in the neighouring countries of Malawi and Zambia, provoking a continuing rise in some of the major rivers.

Mozambique's Coordinating Council for the General Population and Housing Census (CCRGPH) has just approved a new budget, totalling 34 million US dollars for the 2007 census, due to be held in August.

Continued rains in central Mozambique, and in Zambia and Zimbabwe, are raising the levels of several rivers, posing the threat of flooding, warns the Thursday bulletin from the Mozambican National Water Board (DNA).

The Mozambican Environment Ministry says that conditions have been created to store safely all the obsolete pesticides collected across the country, while awaiting their definitive re-export to an as yet unspecified destination.

Heavy rains are continuing in much of central and northern Mozambique, as well as in the neighbouring countries of Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe, leading to fears of flooding in some of the main river valleys.

The ninth section of the Maputo City Court on Tuesday night returned to the media company SOICO all the goods that had been seized last week, in order to cover an alleged debt to a former worker on "O Pais", the weekly paper owned by SOICO.

About 160 hectares of crops have been lost in Mozambique's southernmost district of Matutuine due to flooding on the Maputo river, according to a Tuesday report on Radio Mozambique.

The presiding judge of the Maputo City Court, Augusto Paulino, on Tuesday blamed the media company SOICO for the seizure of its assets by the ninth section of the court, on the warrant of one of his subordinates, judge Pedro Chambal Brown.

As from Monday, the old notes and coins of the Mozambican currency, the metical, cease to be legal tender.

The major challenges facing Mozambique in 2007 remain implementing "the national agenda for the struggle against poverty", and fighting the obstacles that hinder the country's development, declared President Armando Guebuza on Sunday night, in his New Year address to the nation.

The Mozambican civil aviation authorities on Friday siezed a South African helicopter that landed illegally on a beach in Inhassoro, in the southern province of Inhambane.

The Mozambican government's National Demining Institute (IND) announced on Friday, in the central city of Beira, that expert inspection of the Sena railway line will be undertaken to check whether it really is free of land mines.