Mozambique: Corruption charges brought against 10 in school textbook case

Mozambique’s central anti-corruption office (GCCC) has brought charges against ten people for corruption in a case involving school textbooks reported in May 2022, the entity announced on Monday.

The indictment concerns nine employees of the Ministry of Education and Human Development (MINEDH) and a publishing company involved in the production of textbooks, the GCCC said in a statement.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office found evidence of active and passive corruption, fraud, abuse of office or functions and payment of undue remuneration. These offences resulted from the establishment of facts such as false information, favouring people without the necessary qualifications or experience to participate in the design and preparation of textbooks, violation of public procurement rules, non-compliance with the evaluation phases of the textbooks, solicitation by MINEDH employees of undue payment or sponsorship to publishers, receipt of gifts, as well as payment of undue remuneration.

In the note, it is said that nine of the ten accused defendants respond to the trial in freedom, under a periodic term of identity and residence check.

In the statement, which does not identify the publisher involved, it is noted that a separate case has been opened for the continuation of investigations in the country and abroad, around the aforementioned scandal, aiming at the criminal liability of possibly more people involved.

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In August 2022, following the complaint, a commission of inquiry by MINEDH pointed to negligence on the part of Porto Editora as one of the causes of the errors classified as serious in the textbooks of the 6th grade of primary education in the country. “The corrections presented, contained in the consultants’ reports and signed by the director of the National Institute for the Development of Education, were not fully accepted by Porto Editora, which reveals negligence on the part of the latter in fulfilling its obligations,” said the Minister of Education, Carmelita Namashulua, at the time.

Among the various errors detected in the book, removed from schools after the discovery of the mistakes, is the geographical location of Mozambique, which in the manual is located in East Africa and is not listed as a country of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), an entity in whose foundation the country participated.

Another anomaly considered serious is the location of ancient borders of Zimbabwe, a country that borders Mozambique, but which the book indicates is bathed by the Red Sea. The misconceptions also include the illustration of a photo of the Angolan parliament as being from Mozambique.

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Source: Lusa