Maputo, July 19, 2024 (Lusa) - Mozambique's Bar Association (OAM) expressed its willingness on Friday to mediate in the dispute between the government and the judges. The judges have announced a strike from 9 August due to a lack of response to their demands.
‘We put ourselves at the parties' disposal to jointly find ways out of the visible, but remediable, differences that separate them. Nothing is impossible if we are open-minded and recognise mistakes,’ the Bar Association said in a statement.
On 9 July, the Mozambican Association of Judges (AMJ) announced a month-long general strike starting on 9 August due to the government's failure to respond to their demands. This decision raised public debate about the strike's legitimacy, given that it is a sovereign body.
On Monday, the AMJ said it had the legitimacy to strike and reiterated its demand for financial independence and security for the profession.
In today's statement, the OAM also expressed its solidarity with the judges in their fight to ‘regain their violated rights’, mentioning two allowances that have been taken away from them, namely the technical allowance of 60% of the basic salary and the exclusivity allowance of 50% of the same salary.
For example, if a judicial magistrate earns a basic salary of 35,000 meticais [€503], with those two allowances he would have a salary of 73,500 [€1,057]. As you can see, this demand by the judicial magistrates is not futile, but useful, not least because, rather than claiming new rights, they are claiming what has been unjustly and illegally taken away from them. Consistency is necessary in this case,’ the OAM explained.
The OAM has pledged to do everything it can to ensure that society is not harmed by the announced strike, saying that it will be on the lookout for ‘the usual intimidating and persecutory tactics to persecute people instead of solving problems’.
The Mozambican judges are complaining about an alleged ‘depreciation of their status’ and flaws in the application of the new Single Salary Table, which has been strongly contested by other professional classes, such as doctors and teachers, who have even called strikes in protest at salary delays and cuts.
‘In 2022, the government approved the Single Salary Table and that was the moment when we saw an increasing deterioration in the status of judges (...) We did everything we could to prevent it from going ahead because it represented a step backwards in the achievements of the class, in terms of their remuneration status,’ said the president of the AMJ, Esmeraldo Matavele, on Monday, describing the Single Salary Table as “an affront” that “devalues” the judiciary.
Meanwhile, the Mozambican Association of Public Prosecutors (AMMMP) also submitted a list of demands to the government on Wednesday, calling for autonomy and financial independence, improvements in salaries and security for professionals in the sector.
In a statement, the public prosecutors said they had given the Mozambican government 30 days to respond to their demands.
‘In the absence of a response within 30 days, the General Assembly will meet and decree measures to be taken by the class in the future,’ the document added.
Approved in 2022 to eliminate asymmetries and keep the state wage bill under control, the start of the Single Salary Table caused salaries to skyrocket by around 36%, from 11.6 billion meticais/month (€169 million/month) to 15.8 billion meticais/month (€231 million/month).
The Single Salary Table cost around 28.5 billion meticais (€410 million), ‘more than expected’, according to an International Monetary Fund (IMF) document on the evaluation of Mozambique's assistance programme consulted by Lusa in January.
LN/ADB // ADB.
Lusa
