afrol News, 11 December - Mozambican Minister of Agriculture, Erasmo Muhate, has been fired with immediate effect. The axing of the minister who had a 10-month stint in office was contained in a terse presidential communiqué released on Tuesday.

The communiqué failed to publicly detail the reasons for the unexpected move. It only said Muhate, who took over from Tomas Mandlate on 27 February 2007, had been relieved from office through a presidential decree.

The government did not diclose the reasons for firing Mandlate who took up the position in 2004.

The axed minister was replaced by Soares Nhaca, a Deputy Minister of Labour.

In May this year, Muhate's offices were gutted by fire. The incident happened three months after his appointment as Minister of Agriculture.

Muhate's sacking came at a time when the country is battling a major food crisis that had left thousands of Mozambicans without food. Some 520,000 people in the country's central and southern regions face food crisis, which was blamed on bad weather conditions, the flooding of Zambezi River and passage of cyclone.

By staff writer

© afrol News

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