The former president of the Mozambican Tax Authority (AT) and the National Statistics Institute (INE), Rosário Fernandes, believes that the financial difficulties facing the Mozambican state are partly due to excessive spending by public servants.

Rosário Fernandes, who was also deputy minister for Industry and Trade, speaks of serious errors in governance, exacerbated by the lack of ethics and probity of most public servants. For the former government official, a state cannot be administered through populist and unrealistic verbiage, stressing that "good governance is achieved through a commitment to transparency, ethics, education and citizen training in different areas".

On Thursday (25), Rosário Fernandes met with the academic community of the Pedagogical University of Maputo (UP) to give lectures on probity and stability in government.

Quoted by Media FaxFernandes took advantage of the date, April 25, which coincides with the Carnation Revolution in Portugal and which culminated in the overthrow of the fascist regime, to recall that the political transformations that took place in the former colony and which culminated in Mozambique's independence in 1975, resulted from the discontent of the Portuguese people due to misery, poverty, injustice, inequality and other evils.

According to Rosário Fernandes, these ills stem from the lack of commitment of the governments of the day towards their citizens.

"Instead of investing in a significant and focused way in the education and training of citizens in different areas, public servants focus on corruption, influence peddling, illicit enrichment, excessive spending and a lack of ethics and deontology in the management of public goods," said the source.