Palma: Volunteers set up network to locate missing persons

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Palma: Volunteers set up network to locate missing persons

4:05 CAT | 09 Apr 2021

File photo: O País

Mozambique’s Volunteer Anonymous Solidarity Movement (VAMOZ) is helping to locate the victims of the attack in Palma and reunite them with their families. In all, the group has already managed to bring together around a thousand people.

In an operation called “Hope4Palma” (“Esperança por Palma” in Portuguese), VAMOZ has helped more than 4,000 people who had disappeared to communicate again.

VAMOZ coordinator Joana Martins says that the idea came to her after seeing the disarray in which people fled.

Joanam.dw_ — *VAMOZ coordinator Joana Martins*

“There were a lot of people looking for relations. Companies, families, looking for their people. So, VAMOZ decided to create this operation ‘Hope4Palma’ – Hope for Palma -because hope is what we all needed,” Joana Martins says.

Uniting victims to their families

From then on, with volunteer help, VAMOZ started to register lost people through reports from their relatives. “What we were doing was like this. A boat ‘said’: ‘Look, VAMOZ, I have in my boat 20 people and these are the names of the 20 people. You volunteers try to find family members, or companies, so that they can tell you that they are alive and now we are making a plan to take them to Pemba'”, Martins explains.

The volunteers set up a communication system that works 24 hours a day and can be used by anybody looking for missing family members.

Family members can register through the numbers 84 211, or 8000911 or 84 3325239. They can also use these numbers to find out if there is information about the people they are looking for.

“And when someone arrives, when the person works for a company, the company has someone there to receive and take care of this person. Other people are accompanied by the local authorities, the United Nations, volunteers who try to help and refer them,” Matins instances.

Resources are needed

VAMOZ works in partnership with the National Institute for Disaster Management, which this week announced that more than 40 million meticais (€0.5 million) is needed to assist the 30,000 victims of attacks, spokesman César Tembe said.

“The situation in Palma has increased the number of displaced people. Pemba city, since the 24th [March] is estimated to have received about 30,000 displaced persons”. In all, 700,000 people have been forced to flee their homes by violence in Cabo Delgado.

Todos os esforços para ajudar nesta missão continuam. As histórias que ouvimos das vítimas e seus familiares são muito…

Publicado por VAMOZ – Voluntários Anónimos de Moçambique em Sexta-feira, 2 de abril de 2021

Source: Deutsche Welle