ARA-Sul warns Gaza farmers to remove equipment from the banks of Limpopo as waters rising rapidly – Mozambique

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ARA-Sul warns Gaza farmers to remove equipment from the banks of Limpopo as waters rising rapidly – Mozambique

8:03 CAT | 06 Jan 2017

Mozambique’s Southern Regional Water Board (ARA-Sul) has warned farmers in Gaza province to remove any equipment from the banks of the Limpopo river to safer places.

The river is now rapidly rising, thanks to heavy rains in the upper Limpopo Basin.

The Director of the Limpopo Basin Management Unit, Edgar Chongo, cited by Radio Mozambique on Thursday, warned that the flow of the river in northern Gaza has reached a thousand cubic metres a second. This wave, which poses the risk of possible flooding of the river banks, has passed the measurement station at Combumune, and is on its way downstream to Chokwe, the heart of Limpopo irrigated agriculture, and eventually to the provincial capital, Xai-Xai.

Chongo warned that equipment placed on or near the river bed, when the Limpopo was very low, now runs the risk of being submerged, and so should be moved to higher ground.

LIMCOM Map

Despite this warning, the overall outlook for Gaza agriculture is good. Chongo said that rain has been falling throughout the province, thus breaking the drought that struck Gaza in 2016. The current rains, he said, open the prospects for good harvests in the current agricultural campaign.

Source: AIM