Maputo, Nov. 3, 2024 (Lusa) - Mozambique's National Roads Administration (ANE) said on Tuesday that it needs at least 180 million meticais (€2.6 million) for road maintenance in Maputo, the Mozambican capital, during the 2024-2025 rainy season.

‘This amount could be higher or lower depending on the damage to the road network. There are critical and cyclical sections where flooding, waterlogging and some conditioned transitability occur. Still, we are ready,’ said Dade Mendes, ANE delegate in Maputo province, quoted today by Rádio Moçambique.

According to Mendes, in addition to the amount that could be spent on restoring accessibility in the event of road degradation and cuts, contractors have been contacted to help in emergencies.

‘We're on standby, and if the rains spare us, we won't have serious situations, but we have contractors who are already sensitised, including technicians from ANE and the provincial inspectorate,’ explained the delegate.

The last rainy season in Mozambique, 2023-2024, affected around 240,000 people, totally destroying more than 1,800 homes, according to figures presented in June by the government.

Between 2019 and 2023, extreme events such as cyclones and storms caused at least 1,016 deaths in Mozambique, affecting around 4.9 million people, according to a report by the National Statistics Institute (INE) to which Lusa had access.

In the 2023 Basic Environmental Indicators report, INE details all the extreme events since 2019, and their consequences, adding that these also caused 2,936 injuries over the same four-year period.

Mozambique is considered one of the countries most severely affected by global climate change. During the rainy season, which runs from October to April, it experiences cyclical floods and tropical cyclones.

LYCE/ADB // ADB.

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