Mozambique: Pemba has no more room for displaced people – municipality

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Mozambique: Pemba has no more room for displaced people – municipality

4:21 CAT | 28 Oct 2020

Photo: Noticias

The municipality of Pemba no longer has the space to accommodate more people displaced by the war in northern Mozambique (IDPs) after the recent wave of around 10,000 IDPs, announcing that they should be moved to neighbouring locations, including Nampula province.

“Today we have displaced people in the Paquite transitional centre who have expressed interest in going to the neighbouring province of Nampula. Others will be sent to the districts of Montepuez, Ancuabe and Mecufi,” said Pemba mayor, Florete Simba Motarua, quoted by Notícias today.

“According to the 2017 general population census, Pemba had more than 204,000 inhabitants,” the mayor says, “but at the moment there are more than 300,000 [people in the city].”

“In the past three years, we have received more than 100,000 displaced people,” he said. There is no land “for the construction of one or more reception centres for so many people”.

The new wave of displaced persons began on October 16, after further attacks by armed rebels in the northern province of Cabo Delgado.

Since then, about 10,000 people have arrived on Paquitequete and other beaches in Pemba.

The majority of those displaced are women and children, who arrive in the provincial capital hungry and dehydrated, with several organizations improvising emergency humanitarian aid for them on arrival.

Some of those undertaking the voyage are already sick, and at least two succumbed en route, Manuel Nota, director of the Catholic humanitarian organisation Caritas in Pemba, told Lusa.

Cabo Delgado, in northern Mozambique, has been the scene of armed attacks by forces classified as terrorists for three years now. Estimates of the number of deaths range from 1,000 to 2,000.

Source: Lusa