Mozambique: Government decrees red alert – AIM report | Watch

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Mozambique: Government decrees red alert – AIM report | Watch

7:21 CAT | 23 Feb 2023

Screen grab: TV Sucesso

The Mozambican government on Tuesday declared a Red Alert, the highest state of readiness against natural disasters.

Under a red alert, the normal bureaucratic procedures used by the State for acquiring goods and services, or hiring public works contractors are suspended, in favour of quicker measures such as direct tendering – despite the risks of corruption inherent in such methods.

Speaking to reporters after the weekly meeting of the Council of Ministers (Cabinet), the government spokesperson, Deputy Justice Minister Filimao Suaze, said that the known death toll since the start of the current rainy season in October is 95. Of these recorded deaths, 11 occurred in the storms and floods that have hit southern Mozambique, particularly Maputo province, this month.

Over 100,000 people have been affected by the storms, said Suaze, 43,500 of them in the south, where major rivers, including the Umbeluzi and the Incomati have burst their banks, cut roads and inundated crops.

Suaze said the government is keeping a close watch on the approach of tropical cyclone Freddy. Brigades consisting of a Minister and a Deputy Minister are being sent to assist the local authorities in all the provinces that may be hit by the cyclone – Maputo, Gaza, Inhambane, Manica, Sofala. Tete and Zambezia.

Freddy is currently over Madagascar, but on its current course it will enter the Mozambique Channel on Wednesday afternoon. According to the projections made by the US Joint Typhoon Warning Centre (JTWC), it will then head more or less due west, making landfall on the coast of Inhambane province on Friday.

Cyclones lose speed over land, and its speed over central Madagascar has fallen to an estimated 45 knots (83 kilometres an hour). But it will pick up speed once it is over water again, and when it hits the Mozambican coast, possibly near the town of Vilanculo, its windspeed will have reached 60 knots.

Over the Mozambican interior, as the cyclone heads towards Zimbabwe and South Africa, its speed is expected to fall to 30 knots, as it begins to dissipate.

Watch the TV Sucesso report.