Africa-Press – Mozambique. The construction of the General Hospital of Nampula have been paralysed for two months, with workers claiming that they have not been paid for seven months. O País has learned that the problem is a delay in disbursements by the project’s funders, which include the Government of Mozambique.
It is not the first time that work on the Nampula General Hospital, in the administrative post Natikiri on the outskirts of Nampula city, has come to a halt. Visiting the site on May 12 of last year, Secretary of State for Nampula Maty Gondola revised the deadline for completion of the work, initially set for May, 2019.
“It is an agreed deadline that, later, we had to go into details of discussion of what should be the responsibility of each of the parties, in order to ensure that we do not have more failures,” Gondola said at the time. But the failures continued. Under the contract, amounts are supposed to be released every 90-day phase of the works’ execution, but these have been delayed.
The more-than US$14 million budget is co-financed by the Arab Bank for Development in Africa ( BADEA) and the Saudi Development Fund, with a 15% contribution from the Mozambican government, through the state budget.
The unpaid workers this week decided to protest outside the contractor’s premises.
“We’ve been without pay for seven months. The bosses always promise to pay, but they never do,” said Carlos José, one of the CETA workers.
CETA northern region management had promised to comment this Thursday.
