The Nampula City Council has revealed that after a life check it has identified a total of 489 employees who were integrated into that institution, entitled to monthly salaries, whose existence has not been proven.

This is a scandal triggered by the current mayor, with possible criminal ramifications, because money from the public purse was being paid to people who did not provide any service to the Nampula Municipal Council.

In addition to this number, the Nampula council also identified 1011 employees in an irregular situation, some with expired employment contracts and others without visas from the Administrative Court (TA), but who were receiving their monthly salaries.

This fraudulent scheme, according to the local portal "Wamphula-fax", is the result of preliminary work carried out at the beginning of the mandate of the current cast, shortly after taking office, in which approximately 2025 employees were registered, who weigh up the monthly payroll of the municipality.

These revelations are contained in the report by the current mayor, Luis Giquira, given last Wednesday during the First Ordinary Session of the Municipal Assembly. He also announced that the ghost employees alone cost the municipality just over 7 million meticais a month.

"When we took over the municipality, we came across a lot of problems with employees' employment contracts and because of this we did a kind of mapping of employees, we called them to come and register so that we could find out which sectors they were working in. Unfortunately, 489 employees haven't shown up to date, I don't know if they'll show up tomorrow, but we believe that they are ghosts and couldn't be on our payroll," explained Giquira.

In fact, according to the mayor, an investigation is underway to find out more details behind the situation.

Giquira also denounced the fact that of a total of 61 workers recently hired by the municipality to carry out certain activities, 34 presented false visas from the Administrative Court.

Because of various irregularities, Giquira indicated that 13 officials and state agents from this institution have been asked by the court to be questioned in order to clarify some doubts.