The chairperson of the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, Eduardo Mulembue, on Tuesday met with representatives of citizens who were once migrant workers in the now defunct German Democratic Republic (GDR), to inform them of the results of his meeting with President Joaquim Chissano at which he had promised to raise their concerns.
The meeting followed an invasion of the Assembly building by about 300 of the former migrants (known colloquially as "majermanes") last Thursday. The protestors were demanding that the Assembly oblige the government to implement a parliamentary resolution of May 2003 on the majermanes' claims for more money.
The government says it is already implementing that resolution, and that in reality it does not owe anything to the former migrants.
Mulembue ended the majermane Thursday occupation of the Assembly by meeting with their leaders, and promising to bring them a reply from Chissano to their demands the following day.
But Mulembue was unable to speak with Chissano at once, and so his second meeting with the majermanes was postponed to Tuesday.
After the meeting, Alberto Mahuaie, the coordinator of the Forum of Returnees from the GDR, seemed cautiously optimistic. He told reporters that Mulembue had informed them of the existence of a dispatch signed by Chissano that will authorise them to approach the Labour Ministry which will tell them what concrete steps are being taken to implement the May 2003 resolution.
They had also been assured that four ministries (he did not say which ones) had been instructed to work on carrying out the resolution. Mahuaie thus hoped that all the provisions of the resolution would be carried out.
The majermanes seem quite unaware that in October Labour Minister Mario Sevene reported to the Assembly on the implementation of the May resolution: and Sevene can hardly tell the former migrants something different from what he told the parliamentarians. And in October he made it clear that there would be no extra money for the majermanes.
The government had already promised, in April 2002, as an "exceptional measure", to return to the former migrants the social security contributions discounted from their wages in Germany, and sent to Mozambique. This money would be paid to every majermane registered with the Labour Ministry.
In April 2002. there were 11,252 registered majermanes, and returning their social security contributions would cost the state some 7.5 million US dollars. By October 2003, the number registered had risen to about 17,000, with a corresponding increase in the money to be paid.
Thus the government had carried out one of the main recommendations of the resolution, which was precisely to continue registering the former migrants, and repaying the social security.
The most controversial clause in the resolution concerned the migrants' deferred wages. Between 1986 and 1990, 60 per cent of each migrant's wage was compulsorily transferred to Mozambique, and paid to its owner in local currency, meticais, on his return. The resolution said that 10 per cent of this sum was unjustly deducted as Labour Ministry expenses,and should be returned to the majermanes.
But in October, Sevene pointed out that this 10 per cent deduction was not introduced until 1988, two years before the whole migrant labour agreement collapsed in the ruins of the Berlin Wall.
Under the 1979 labour agreement between Mozambique and the GDR, the costs inherent in sending thousands of Mozambicans to Germany were to be borne by both countries. By 1988 both the GDR and Mozambique were finding it difficult to comply with this.
Thanks to the war of destabilisation, the Mozambican government was desperately short of money, and it was decided that the migrants themselves, as the main beneficiaries of the agreement, should contribute to the administrative costs. The government did not think this could be interpreted as a violation of the 1979 agreement, and saw no reason to return the money.
The resolution also wanted "corrected charts of the workers' wages". The government replied there was nothing to correct. The East German employers had provided monthly wage sheets, and on the basis of these a summary was drawn up of the money transferred to Mozambique, which gave the date and the exchange rates used (between the East German mark and the US dollar, and between the dollar and the metical).
Among the other issues raised by the resolution was the question of 219,000 marks (equivalent to about 136,000 dollars) supposedly still owing to 73 majermanes who had worked in a German cement factory. Sevene told the Assembly in October that this money had been paid to its legitimate owners in 1991, and there was documentary proof of this.
In short, the majermanes' hopes of extracting further large sums from the Mozambican state budget are misplaced.
Fonte: AIM
