Citizenship Campaign in the Drum Festival
As part of the “Batuque” or Drum Festival of the Maputo Municipal Council,which aims to exalt culture as a differentiating factor of people, Standard Bank – patron of the celebrations of the 125th anniversary of the Mozambican capital city – promoted, from the 23rd to the 25th August, the citizenship campaign in the Guachene neighbourhood in the municipal district of KaTembe.
For three consecutive days,the mobile brigades of the Mozambique Revenue Authority, the Registry and Notary as well as the Department of Civil Identification processed a total of 1.936 documents, of which 618 correspond to NUIT, 488 to Personal Birth Certificates and 830 to identification titles to biometric identity cards.
Speaking on the occasion, the KaTembe district councillor, Luís Matsinhe welcomed Standard Bank for the citizenship campaign project, since civil registration had a great adherence of the KaTembe citizens.
“KaTembe only had access to a division of the civil registration office as from last year,with limited capacity to meet the demand of the district”, said the councilman, stressing that the citizenship campaign from Standard Bank “came in great time and exceeded the expectations, judging from people’s adherence”.
In his turn, the representative from Standard Bank, Alfredo Lemos, said “we were very pleased when we got here on Thursday and found a great number of people waiting for us, which means that the citizenship campaign project from Standard Bank is already, somehow, helping to improve the lives of people from KaTembe”.
“Thanks to this project we’ve brought to KaTembe since Thursday, as part of the celebrations for the 125 years of Maputo city, of which the Standard Bank is patron, many residents now have NUIT, many children were registered and, very briefly, many citizens will also receive their identity cards, issued free of charge in this location”, said Alfredo Lemos.
For the queen of KaTembe,Amelia Tembe, the citizenship project of Standard Bank should be extended for longer, because many people from that township, including children, do not have documents, “The Bank is giving the opportunity so that the poorest can also register their children and obtain identity cards without paying anything,which is commendable”, stated the queen of KaTembe.
Also regarding the activity, a resident of KaTembe, Castiga Magaia, commented that it was “a good initiative, because it will help a lot of people here in KaTembe”. As we see, this crowd is a sign that many people of this municipal district have problems related to civil registration and identification due to lack of financial resources, a situation that certainly the Bank helped to minimize”.
It should be noted that the citizenship project began in August 2011 in the village of Xinavane and has since then been to the Chibuto village, the cities of Chimoio, Nacala and Maputo. In the last city referred, as part of the celebrations for the 125 years, the project will also go to the townships of Ka Nyaka and Ka Mubukwuana.