Yellow Card — 16,000 Ghost Employees and the Government That Created Them

The Mozambican government announced to the country, as if commenting on a curious fact, that it had discovered 16,000 ghost employees. A revelation made so simply it almost seems like a joke. But it's not. These are 16,000 names who, for years, have been draining the state's coffers, receiving salaries, benefits, and perks without ever appearing in an office, a classroom, or a health clinic. They are luxurious ghosts, with active bank accounts, clean payrolls, and, in some cases, with family members or accomplices...

The official announcement was made without details, without transparency, without a single name being revealed. It's unclear which ministries they were assigned to, what salary levels they received, who processed their payments, or who signed their timesheets. All we know about this scandal is the magic number: 16,000. This lack of information is not innocent. It's a smokescreen, a rehearsed ploy to minimize the scandal, as if it were enough to simply throw the number at the public and move on.

We're talking about a gigantic fraud that, hypothetically, we can assume was meticulously engineered over the last 35 years, costing the state billions of meticais. We're not just dealing with an administrative failure; we're dealing with an ongoing project of embezzlement, where the ghosts were nurtured and protected because they served the political machine. The irony is that, instead of owning up to the scandal, the government preferred to present the hiring of over 10,000 new employees as the solution. In other words: we've discovered that the ship is sinking.

What's striking is the complete disconnect between the people's reality and the government's narrative. While ghosts received regular salaries, real teachers were forced to teach without chalk, chairs, or timely pay. Doctors had to improvise surgeries with obsolete equipment. Police officers continued to provide security with torn boots and no ammunition. Mozambique's tragedy is this: the living suffer without resources, while the dead or nonexistent receive regular salaries and still pay taxes and receive vacation pay.

The economic damage is insurmountable. If only part of this money had been used wisely, Mozambique would have hundreds of additional hospitals, thousands of schools, and a much more robust public service network. The difference between the country we have and the country we could have is largely explained by these practices of silent plunder. How many children died because there were no basic medicines in hospitals? How many families were orphaned by a lack of medical care?

The government tries to present the discovery as an administrative victory, but the truth is that it's a public confession of incompetence and complicity. You don't suddenly discover 16,000 ghosts. This scheme lasted years, perhaps decades, and was only revealed now because it became impossible to hide. And if 16,000 were found, how many more are still hidden in the folds of the system? The question is inevitable: don't the ghosts also appear on the voter rolls to justify voting?

This case highlights something even more serious: Mozambique doesn't know how many of us there are, who we are, or where we are. If there's no control over the state's payroll, how can we trust electoral numbers or demographic data? It's worth remembering the episode in which Rosário Fernandes, then head of the INE (National Statistics Institute), challenged the CNE's magical figures regarding the census. He was politically brutally refuted and ended up resigning. Today, the revelation of these phantoms vindicates his objection: we live in a country of numbers, where demographic data is invented and indicators are manipulated at the whim of a group, which profoundly suggests a lack of ethics in public administration.

The human impact must always be remembered. It's not just about misappropriated funds, but about lives sacrificed. Every hospital that wasn't built represents hundreds of deaths that could have been prevented. Every school that wasn't built represents thousands of children who didn't learn to read in time. Every phantom salary paid represents a real salary that didn't reach those who work, those who teach, those who save lives. The drama is tragic, but also comical, because the entire country is treated as the private property of an extremely predatory elite.

The promise to hire 10,000 new employees after dismantling 16,000 ghosts sounds like a bad joke. It's like telling a terminally ill patient that, since the surgery failed, we'll offer them aspirin. The problem isn't the number of employees, but the rotten system that allows ghosts to exist. Replacing the dead with the living without changing the system merely renews the cycle of corruption. And that's what Frelimo knows how to do like no one else: transform scandals into opportunities to reinforce clientelism.

That's why this yellow card doesn't go to the ghosts. They've already fulfilled their role of not existing. The yellow card goes to the Frelimo government, which insists on mocking the intelligence of the Mozambican people. It goes to the ministers who shamelessly sign statements, to the leaders who have turned the state into a looting counter, and to a party that for 50 years has governed not to serve the people, but to serve itself.

The case of the 16,000 ghosts is just the tip of the iceberg. Corruption developed faster than the nation.

There's no doubt, at least for the most attentive, that this situation reveals the ethical and moral bankruptcy of those in power, a moral corrosion that's been building for more than three decades and that proves to be an incurable cancer as long as those who created it continue to be the same ones who believe they have the antidote. The people deserve clear answers: who are the 16,000? Who put them on the payroll? Who benefited? Who will return the money? Until then, we will continue to live in a country where the living go hungry and the dead receive salaries.

A yellow card, therefore, for a government that has no shame in transforming Mozambique into a theater of the absurd. A government that starves its citizens to death, neglect, and misery, while feeding living ghosts who wander in offices and mansions around the world. But one day, we'll see guilt die alone when everyone sees who it fornicated with.