Mozambican President Armando Guebuza declared on Monday that poverty will not wither away of its own accord, but must be fought by the hard work of each Mozambican citizen.
Speaking at a rally in the Mucojo administrative post, in Macomia district, as part of his working visit to the northern province of Cabo Delgado, Guebuza stressed that it is possible to end poverty in Mozambique, but first the people must believe in this possibility.
"For this to happen, we must believe that poverty can be defeated", he said. "But poverty will not just go away. We will not just wake up one day and say that poverty has finished".
"To overcome poverty we must use the great weapon of work", Guebuza added. "If we continue working, bit by bit poverty will be brought to an end". In this battle, each person must play a role in his or her sphere of activity, always working to improve production.
To help the people in this struggle, said the President, the government had set up the District Development Fund, still generally referred to as "the seven million", since it began in 2006 as a lump sum of seven million meticais (about 206,000 US dollars at current exchange rates) from the state budget allocated to each of the 128 districts, to finance small scale projects that would create jobs and boost food security.
An additional infrastructure fund, of 2.5 million meticais per district, has been used to finance basic infrastructure such as local roads and water sources.
"These seven million will give greater strength to our people to fight poverty more rapidly and provide more jobs", said Guebuza. The infrastructure fund, he added, was not very much, but it helped solve some immediate problems.
http://allafrica.com/stories/201005110903.html
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