Africa-Press – Mozambique. The new law governing the remuneration of Mozambican state employees and agents will cost a maximum 19 billion meticais (€252 million), but reduce the annual costs of subsidies, Mozambique finance minister Adriano Maleiane announced on Wednesday.
“We incorporated [the amounts] – it’s 19 billion meticais – into salaries, but we are saving 10 billion meticais (€133 million) that we must find every year” through increases in subsidies resulting from salary updates, he said.
Adriano Maleiane was speaking at a press conference in Maputo, clarifying the draft law approved by the Council of Ministers on August 31 and sent for voting to the Assembly of the Republic at a date still not scheduled.
A unitary law will replace several different laws governing salaries in the civil service. The current 103 salary scales will give way to two, with proportional reference criteria between levels in relation to the top of the list – the salary of the President of the Republic – without specific monetary amounts being inscribed in the law, Maleiane explained.
There is also a simplification of subsidies, progressions and other mechanisms.
The change “would not imply any reduction in salaries”, he said, noting that work was underway to fit the 450,000 state employees in the new charts.
The predicted impact of a first “bulk framework” points to 19 billion meticais, but Maleiane believes that this is an overestimate. “The final value will depend on the framing work,” which was being “refined” with the support of IT resources, he said.
The clarifications come a week after judges and magistrates reacted to government proposals by delivering a petition to the Assembly of the Republic in which they assert that, according to the Constitution, the setting of salaries in the sector is the exclusive competence of parliament.
Adriano Maleiane said on Wednesday that the proposed unitary law would not apply to the statutes of the magistracy or any other professional class.
Salaries and benefits in the civil service are the subject of heated debate every time they are mentioned.
In May, parliament approved the Statute of Mozambican Parliamentary Employees and Agents in general, but the measure generated criticism, given the difficulties the country is going through with Covid-19 and the armed attacks in the north.
Following the challenge, the debate on the details of the statute was removed from the parliamentary agenda, preventing its application.
