Mozambique must learn to plan better after flood ‘tragedy’, President says at handover of 3,062 land plots on 300 hectares

Mozambican President Daniel Chapo said today that the country must learn from the recent flood “tragedy” by rebuilding and planning “better” in order to counter the “vulnerability” it faces. “Tragedies also teach us. They teach us that rebuilding is not enough.

We must rebuild better, plan better, build with vision and refuse the continuation of our vulnerability. We must build resilience. And it is precisely at this point that the act we are carrying out today — the handover of 3,062 serviced plots — takes on an even deeper dimension,” the head of state said.

Daniel Chapo today handed over around 300 hectares of land for housing construction under the National Serviced Land Project, in the village of Chiacanimisse, Matutuine district, Maputo province. “Properly demarcated plots, in suitable areas for habitation and previously planned, with access to infrastructure such as roads, water, sanitation and electricity, and with reserved space for services such as schools, a health post, police post, commerce, market facilities, leisure and sport,” he highlighted. The head of state added that this was not merely the delivery of 3,062 serviced plots of land, but also a step towards “organising the territory”, in contrast to the floods that last month affected houses built in prohibited areas.

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“We are protecting present and future lives. We are preparing safer communities and transforming the way the country will grow and is growing,” he said. “Likewise, today, as a State, we are reconciling ourselves with history, since former players of our national football team and members of the technical staff who, in 1996, qualified for the Africa Cup of Nations, held in South Africa, will also benefit from these plots,” Daniel Chapo stressed.

Manuel Bucuane ‘Tico-Tico’, considered the top scorer in the history of the ‘Mambas’, was one of the former Mozambican national team players who benefited from the granting of Land Use and Benefit Rights (DUAT) titles relating to the plots. Still on the consequences of the January floods, which affected around 725,000 people, mainly in the south of the country, as well as the current rainy season since October, Daniel Chapo assured that State support will arrive: “To compatriots who lost their homes, their belongings and, in many cases, the fruits of a lifetime of work, I want to say clearly that you are not alone: the State will remain present, the Mozambican government will remain present, supporting, rebuilding and creating conditions so that you can rise again with even greater strength, confidence and hope.” The Mozambican President also acknowledged the “extraordinary wave of solidarity that arose throughout the country and beyond our borders” following last month’s floods. “Mozambique has once again demonstrated that, in difficult times, we are one family,” he said.

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