Mozambique: Fire victims in Chamanculo receive assistance

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Mozambique: Fire victims in Chamanculo receive assistance

6:55 CAT | 16 Aug 2021

Photo: O País

The Maputo municipality on Friday donated a wide variety of building materials as well as consumer goods including rice, cooking oil, maize flour, and sugar to the 22 households made homeless, when their houses were destroyed by fire on Thursday in the neighourhood of Chamanculo.

The mayor, Eneas Comiche, who paid a visit to the victims, said the building materials are meant to rapidly ease the suffering the households are facing, by enabling them to rebuild their lives.

“But the incident has left a lesson both to the residents and the municipality about the need for better land use planning, in order to avoid similar disasters in future,” said Comiche.

The municipality, with support from Italy and Barcelona, has drawn up a requalification plan for several parts of the city, including Chamanculo, but the project has not been moving as fast as desired.

Comiche assured the affected households that the city council will continue to work closely with them in cleaning up the area that has been identified for them to spend the nights while they seek to rebuild their houses.

On Thursday, the families spent the windy night on the premises of a civil society association and received blankets distributed by Mozambique’s National Institute for Disaster Management and Risk Reduction (INGD) which is also assessing other means intended to help the households rebuild their lives.

The fire-fighting brigade that was called to extinguish the fires has not been able to find out what might have caused the blaze, but suggested there may have been a short-circuit in the electricity installation of one of the houses.

After a visit to the site, Mozambique’s main opposition party, Renamo, has pledged, through its group in the Municipal Assembly, to mobilise support for the victims of the tragedy.

Source: AIM