The economist and former president of the Mozambican Tax Authority (AT) and the National Statistics Institute (INE), Rosário Fernandes, believes that the quality of the inaugurated infrastructures that characterize the current mandate is insignificant in relation to the level of expenditure made on the logistics of the entities involved in these events.

The former leader made these statements last Thursday (25), during the inaugural lecture at the Pedagogical University - Maputo.

Without naming names, Rosário Fernandes pointed out that the multifaceted inaugurations across the length and breadth of the country of infrastructures that are the responsibility of elected, appointed or seconded local governments, but which are carried out by figures from Maputo, with all the logistical costs involved, is a clear sign of a lack of ethical spending.

"A minister or national director leaves Maputo to inaugurate a water fountain that could have been inaugurated by a provincial director, administrator or mayor. Is that necessary? Wouldn't the money spent on this trip be used to meet other state needs?" asked the former leader, quoted by the newspaper Media Fax.

In addition, the former president of the AT also spoke of unnecessary trips abroad by civil servants, which cost the state a great deal but are not economically rational. For him, these are high costs that at some point clash with public ethics.

"Many of these civil servants who often travel abroad don't even know the country or even their own village, but they do know Lisbon, Paris, Washington, at the expense of the state. In the end, they don't bring any results, except to decapitalize the state. This is where we have to call the legal and administrative supervisory bodies to account," said Rosário Fernandes.

The source stressed that the successive offices of the first ladies, from the central, provincial and district governments to the municipalities, not excluding the Secretariats of State (SdE) in the provinces, are unnecessary and should be abolished because they are also decapitalizing the state.

"Don't imagine in budgetary terms this heavy machine of first ladies and secretaries of state. That number of people, that bureaucratic part, the facilities, the equipment used, when accounted for and inserted into the public accounts. What impact does this have on the state budget? We're always talking about budget deficits and we have all these excesses. What does that mean?

"We must have the courage to abolish the offices of the first ladies at all levels, including the state secretariats at provincial level. We must strengthen the power of local governors who are the result of popular will," concluded Fernandes.