Africa-Press – Mozambique. Mozambican Prime Minister Benvinda Levi on Friday declared that the fight against crime is one of the government’s top priorities.
Swearing into office Ilidio Miguel as the new General Director of the National Criminal Investigation Service (SERNIC), and Sinesio Dias as the Assistant General Director, Levi said that peace and security “are essential elements to guarantee the social and economic well-being of citizens and for building a genuine state of the democratic rule of law”.
To achieve these goals, she said, the government “has been strengthening the technical capacity of SERNIC through training specialist human resources, equipping its laboratories and allocating additional means for investigation”.
The appointment of the new SERNIC leaders, the Prime Minister added, complemented the recent changes in which SERNIC had been taken out of the Ministry of the Interior and placed under the Attorney-General’s Office (PGR). This is a change which jurists have been demanding for years but always met stiff resistance from within the police.
“Your main mission,” said Levi, “is to make the performance of the institution you are now heading more robust and efficient and increasingly credible”.
She expected Miguel and Dias “to centre your activity on preventing and vigorously fighting against organised and transnational crime, particularly kidnappings, drug trafficking and trafficking in people, and terrorism and its financing”.
“Carrying out your operational activities,” she added, “requires strict compliance with the law and the inevitable coordination with the bodies of the administration of justice, other state bodies and community and religious leaderships”.
Levi also swore into office the new General Director of the National Prison Service (SERNAP), David Henrique Davide, and told him that “SERNAP plays an essential role in the administration of justice, guaranteeing that sentences are served in line with court decisions and human rights, always taking into account the preparation of inmates, their families and their communities, for social reintegration after serving their sentences”.
Levi expected that Davide would focus his actions on strengthening security and discipline in the prisons, to avoid escapes.
SERNAP officials, she added, should also ensure that the prisons do not become places where further crimes are planned.
Levi said that prison inmates should be trained in skills such as carpentry, metalwork and handicrafts, so that they could be useful to society after their release.
She wanted to see the prisons increase the production from their own farms so that they could become self-sufficient in food and thus reduce their burden on the State’s finances.
