Maputo, Oct. 17, 2025 (Lusa) - Mozambique's government plans to hire 3,962 State Officials and Agents in 2026, including 600 for the Criminal Investigation Service (Sernic), according to data from the budget proposal to which Lusa had access on Friday.
The measure, according to the proposal for the Economic and Social Plan and State Budget 2026, which parliament will begin analysing in the coming days, is justified by "the need to strengthen priority sectors, ensuring greater capacity to provide essential services to the population", but contrasts with the authorisation to hire 4,142 workers in 2025 and 4,880 in 2024.
In 2026, the government plans to hire 2,361 workers in the education sector, mainly teachers, 582 in health and 234 in agriculture. The document also refers to the authorised hiring of 745 workers in the justice sector, including 600 specifically for Sernic, which in 2025 came under the remit of the Attorney General's Office.
These hirings, according to the Economic and Social Plan and State Budget 2026, will have an estimated budgetary impact of 1,135 million meticais (€15.2 million).
On 30 September, Mozambique's government promised to clarify and hold accountable state agents allegedly involved in paying salaries to around 18,000 "ghost" civil servants detected this year.
"Now, what we're going to do is move on to the next phase: clarify the issues and hold them accountable, because there are those responsible. In a salary system, there are always people responsible; a process takes place until the salary lands in an account. So we want to know about this chain: who processed someone's salary, who confirmed the presence of that person who doesn't exist, how it got onto the sheet, why it was paid," said the cabinet spokesman Inocêncio Impissa.
A few days earlier, the Mozambican Minister of State Administration and Civil Service said that around 18,000 "ghost" civil servants had been deactivated this year, promising to "purify" the ranks of these state agents.
"Based on the work we've been doing and the systems we've been introducing, we've been able to detect situations of salary misappropriation. The total number of employees deactivated during this period is around 18,000, which we consider to be ghosts," he said.
As government spokesperson, Impissa said on 30 September that it was only possible to identify these "ghost employees" after the government introduced an electronic system for using mobile phones to provide proof of life for civil servants and state agents, cancelling the previous model that allowed payments to these 18,000 employees.
"We have detected, for example, some cases of deceased colleagues who have continued to receive salaries even though they are deceased, at least since 2021, cases of officials who retired four years ago and continued to receive salaries and we are not sure if it was him or someone else who was receiving a salary instead, and this can be ascertained based on a correspondence process," he pointed out.
According to the official, these supposedly non-existent employees were summoned to face-to-face meetings, but didn't turn up.
Impissa acknowledged that there is still no concrete data on the losses accrued as a result of these crimes, because "each of the employees has a different salary from the other", depending on their category, and, when this is the case, "it's not possible to know at first".
PVJ/ADB // ADB.
Lusa
