Mozambique: Half of refugee families in Malawi brought back

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Mozambique: Half of refugee families in Malawi brought back

2:55 CAT | 25 Jul 2022

Photo: Malawi Department of Disaster Management Affairs (DoDMA)

The Mozambican authorities have brought back at least 800 families out of a total of 1,600 who had taken refuge in Malawi since January due to natural disasters in central Mozambique’s Zambezia province.

“We have managed to complete the repatriation process of all the Mozambicans who were here in the accommodation centres and we will ask our colleagues in Malawi to close them,” César Tembe, director of Prevention and Mitigation of the National Institute for Disaster Risk Management and Reduction (INGD), explained to the media in Zambezia province.

The families, who were in four accommodation centres closed on Saturday, took refuge in Malawi following Cyclone Ana, which hit Mozambique in January.

According to César Tembe, the operation required four buses and four boats to carry the people back to Morrumbala district in Zambezia, as well as two trucks to transport goods.

According to INGD, return kits containing cooking utensils and food for at least 30 days have been prepared in a repatriation process expected to take less than a week, the official said.

Malawi shares a vast border with the Mozambican provinces of Tete, Zambezia in the centre and Niassa in the north.

Storm Ana killed at least 20 people in Mozambique, six of them in Tete, and displaced thousands of people in the country and Malawi.

In the 2021-2022 rainy season (October to April), at least 134 people died, and over 760,000 were affected by natural disasters in Mozambique, according to INGD data.

Source: Lusa