“We want food!” hundreds in Beira chant after cyclone – Watch

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“We want food!” hundreds in Beira chant after cyclone – Watch

3:43 CAT | 21 Mar 2019

Photo: AFP

Hundreds of people gathered in Beira on Wednesday in a spontaneous demonstration protesting against the lack of food in the city five days after Cyclone Idai devastated central Mozambique.

“Hunger” and “We want food” were the words chanted by a crowd who had been waiting since early morning for the delivery of sacks of grain offered by the owners of a warehouse.

“The roof collapsed and the owner was giving it to the people,” explains John Joaquim, left homeless by Cyclone Idai and seeing the offer as one way to feed his starving family – even with rice totally soaked through by the rain.

Like Joaquim, hundreds gathered around the flooded warehouse, but were unable to gain access, eventually causing a melée which forced the intervention of the police. On the warehouse floor lay several bags rice already open.

“The PRM [Police of the Republic of Mozambique] is here trying to organise things, but it’s difficult,” Joaquim says.

Joni Manuel, another member of the crowd, complains about police action, saying they had fired to maintain order, an accusation corroborated by those around him.

The spontaneous protest was an opportunity for hundreds of people to complain about the lack of food in accommodation centres, and also against the fact that the city is still without electricity.

“In schools [now acting as accommodation centres] food is not arriving,” Joaquim complains. “I’ve lost my house, my food – we’re all in the same situation,” he said.

The zinc sheet roof of Fernanda Sónia’s house blew off, and at the school “there is not enough food” for her or her children, she complains.

A total of 22 tons of food were unloaded on Sunday in the city of Beira by the United Nations and another 40 tons are on the way, a UN source told Lusa. Also arriving are numerous other donations to a Mozambican government aid program which foresees providing food for up to 400,000 people.

Health services in the city, including Beira Central Hospital, were also seriously affected.

“The outpatient consultation services and psychiatry departments were worst affected,” hospital employee Joaquim Zaqueu says, one of several volunteers dragging tree branches through the mud and debris and out into the road.

“This is our home and we’ve been here together since Monday,” Nangachemo Ziquita, another employee, adds.

Tropical cyclone Idai hit Beira in central Mozambique with heavy rains and winds of up to 170 kilometres per hour on Thursday evening, leaving about 500,000 residents of the country’s fourth largest city without electricity.

Announcing a national state of emergency on Tuesday, Mozambican president Filipe Nyusi said that more than 200 people had died and 350,000 were “at risk”. The country yesterday marked the first of three days of national mourning decreed by the head of state.

Communications were being re-established on Tuesday and improved considerably yesterday, with some mobile internet access restored.

Source: Lusa