Mozambique: Partners promise post-cyclone assistance

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Mozambique: Partners promise post-cyclone assistance

8:04 CAT | 22 Feb 2017

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Mozambique’s international cooperation partners have promised to assist the country in the emergency response to Cyclone Dineo, which swept through the southern province of Inhambane a week ago.

The pledge was given at a meeting in Maputo on Wednesday between the Mozambican relief agency, the National Disasters Management Institute (INGC), and the cooperation partners, at which the INGC gave detailed information on the damage caused by Dineo.

The Resident Coordinator of the United Nations System, Maria de Castro, said that, after an event on the scale of Dineo, it is important to provide comprehensive information, which makes it possible to focus support, thus strengthening the government’s response.

“Today we are promising to channel resources for tents, for shelter, and for vegetable oil which is a very important food input”, said Castro. She added that teams from UN agencies are monitoring the situation on the ground in Inhambane.

The INGC report stressed the need to provide shelter for those made homeless by the cyclone, and to provide seeds that would allow farmers who have lost their crops to replant. Castro believed it would be possible to mobilize resources from the international humanitarian system to meet these requirements.

The current estimates are that seven people died during the cyclone, 51 were injured, and 652,000 people were affected in 12 Inhambane districts.

The INGC calculates that it will take 420 million meticais (about 6.1 million US dollars) to repair the damage to health units, schools and water supply systems. But when damage to other buildings and to crops, and the humanitarian assistance needs are included, the total cost rises to 1.13 billion meticais.

The INGC general director, Joao Machatine, thanked the partners for their support. They had shown themselves “true friends” of Mozambique, despite the current unfavourable international situation.

Machatine added that recently the country had faced a severe drought. Mobilising resources to cope with the 2016 drought had proved a complex task, but coordinate efforts between the government and its partners meant that so far there had been no reports of hunger deaths.

Source: AIM