Food aid suspended in Moamba

Login

Register

http://www.clubofmozambique.com/

Food aid suspended in Moamba

7:13 CAT | 09 Jun 2017

File photo

The Mozambican relief agency, the National Disaster Management Institute (INGC), has suspended its food aid programme in Moamba district, about 60 kilometres northwest of Maputo, now that the severe drought caused by the El Nino weather phenomenon is over, according to a report in Thursday’s issue of the independent daily “O Pais”.

Last year the drought left about 1.5 million people in food insecurity in the southern and central provinces. In Moamba, dozens of head of cattle died as water sources dried up, and the district lost over 1,100 hectares of maize, groundnuts and beans.

But this year it has rained, and the INGC believed it was time to halt the food-for-work programme it had been implementing.

Visiting Moamba on Wednesday, the INGC General Director, Joao Machatine, met with the local authorities and with the District Disaster Risk Management Committee, and stressed that the main challenge they now face is to make the district’s population aware of the need to raise production and to use water rationally.

“We cannot continue to depend on foreign aid so that we can have food whenever there is a drought”, stressed Machatine. “The food aid has been suspended, and now that the drought is over, people need to bank on production, so that they can guarantee that they will have sufficient food”.

“We must also manage water carefully”, he added. “Although it has been raining, nothing guarantees that we will have rain forever. We have to rationalise”.

“O Pais” reports that Moamba farmers and members of the Risk Management Committee welcomed Machatine’s recommendations and told him they have barns ready to receive surplus crops from this year’s harvest.

Machatine also announced that a project is being drawn up to make the local committees more independent in providing assistance in future emergency situations.

Source: AIM