Carlos Mesquita believes it is necessary to step up efforts to achieve the five-year goal – Facts

Despite the satisfactory level of execution of activities to date, the Minister of Public Works, Housing and Water Resources believes that the sector must redouble its efforts and harness its capacity for innovation and creativity in order to achieve the proposed targets by the end of the current five-year period.

Carlos Mesquita made this statement on Thursday, July 18, at the end of the consultative committee of Sector X, which he chaired, held on the 17th and 18th of this month in the town of Ponta de Ouro, in Matutui, Maputo province. The official said that despite the strong support of partners, the overall rate of investment execution is about 23% due to limited financial resources for project implementation.

“For this reason, and not only that, the performance of the sector is also affected by other factors, including the floods that occurred in the north and center of the country, and the El Niño phenomenon that changes precipitation patterns and temperatures. The southern part of the country is suffering from drought, he stressed.

In the list of actions drawn up, the minister praised the construction and provision of 797 houses for residents, distributed among the sub-projects within the scope of the Mozambique Habitat Program. Thus, 253 houses were built under the Renascer project, 436 under the Housing Complex Program and 108 under the Improvement Project. The official said that the houses that have been built have benefited about 3,507 people, in addition to the construction and use of infrastructure on 326 plots of land, benefiting about 1,452 people.

In another approach, Carlos Mesquita said that the sector’s coordination committee concluded that the ongoing emergency repair activities, as well as the maintenance, have significantly improved the traffic situation in the intervention sections, namely 3 de Fevereiro-Incoluane (17 km), Chissibuca-Lindela (132 km), Inchope-Gorongosa (70 km) and Gorongosa-Muela (65 km).

Regarding the rehabilitation works of National Highway 1 (N1), within the financing of the government and the World Bank, government officials insisted that in the first phase, 508 kilometers will be rehabilitated through results and performance-based contracts (OPBRC), including the Inchope-Gorongosa (70 kilometers), Gorongosa-Caia (0 kilometers to 84 kilometers) and Gorongosa-Caia (84 kilometers to 168 kilometers) sections in Sofala province, Chimuara-Nicoadala (0 kilometers to 88 kilometers) and Chimuara-Nicoadala (88 kilometers to 176 kilometers) in Zambezia province and Metoro-Pemba (90 kilometers) in Cabo Delgado province.

Regarding the construction of the water supply system, Carlos Mesquita said that priority will be given to the preparation of an execution project drawn up by designers to better implement the works, providing the necessary quality and resilience.

“Within the scope of water resources management, the Coordination Committee found that three of the four indicators had reached 100% of the target,” he added. He believes that this target has created conditions for the country to increase reservoir capacity by more than 520 million cubic meters, improve hydrological forecast time from three days to six days, and consolidate cooperation with developing countries in the field of joint use of water resources. Mozambique shares the river basin through the signing of an agreement.

“The interventions on the Muziva-Licuar embankment (Lower Zambezi River) have increased the level of safety and strengthened flood protection for 300 hectares of residential areas and 3,000 hectares of cultivated land in irrigated areas”, he said. It is worth emphasizing that the Coordinating Committee, whose motto is “MOPHRH, laying the foundations for sustainable and inclusive socio-economic development”, also focuses on several sectoral actions that are critical to the country’s socio-economic development.