Chronicle Editor
Nqobile Tshili, [email protected]
GOVERNMENT has established a drought relief command centre, which brings all relevant stakeholders together to ensure smooth and effective co-ordination of food aid distribution to needy communities while providing cash transfers for vulnerable households.
More than one million people in the Matabeleland region will receive food aid this year as the Government has come up with an elaborate plan to provide food relief to communities in fulfillment of President Mnangagwa’s instruction that “no one should die of hunger.”
The Government will be providing 6,1 million rural communities with food aid until next year in March as most of the communities did not harvest anything due to the El Nino-induced drought. In urban areas, 1,6 million people will also receive the Government’s support.
Between now and the end of September, each member of the family will be entitled to 7,5kg of maize but from October, the Government will increase the allocation by an additional kilogramme until next year in March. The Government is still calculating how much it is going to be allocating to those in urban areas.
Speaking during a drought mitigation meeting for the Matabeleland region on Sunday, Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare director for social development, Mr Tawanda Zimunga, said to ensure smooth food distribution, the Government has set up a command centre, which will address all the challenges and curb any glitches in providing food aid.
“We have established a Command Centre whose thrust is to address all the challenges that may emerge during the food aid distribution.
“It has members GMB and National Railways of Zimbabwe. We meet every day at 8am and we have also included the provincial social welfare officers.
“The Ministry of Finance, Economic Development and Investment Promotion is also at that meeting and they want to hear what is on the ground. There is a link that has been established where we will be doing all the co-ordination,” said Mr Zimunga.
He said the Government has started mobilising transporters to carry maize from one point to the other and those who will be contracted should have Procurement Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe registration.
The Government has adopted a build-back better strategy as it handles the drought situation where able-bodied beneficiaries will be deployed to rehabilitate infrastructure projects in their communities.
Matabeleland South acting Local Government Director, Mr Zacharia Jusa, said at least 76 percent of the population in Matabeleland South will require food aid.
“What we have presented to the Cabinet committee as Matabeleland South is that 76 percent of our population will require food aid.
“We were initially told that 322 336 will require food aid in Matabeleland South but as a province, we feel the figure does not cover everyone. So, we have our figure that we have submitted for consideration as we believe that our population that requires food aid is 571 638,” said Mr Jusa.
On the other hand, Matabeleland North social development officer, Mr Sicelo Nyathi, said they were targeting to provide food to more than 500 000 people.
“We are waiting for the Zimbabwe Livelihood Assessment Committee (ZimLAC) report but we project that 520 124 people will require food aid in the province this year. At the moment, we are providing food aid to more than 318 000 people,” said Mr Nyathi.
For Bulawayo, the provincial development officer, Ms Energy Mlambo, said the city was in the process of creating a new inclusive database to cater for food-insecure urbanites.
“On Sunday, we held a meeting with Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Minister, July Moyo and it was resolved that we need to update our database for the food insecure households,” she said.
“So, we are going to conduct a door-to-door exercise to update our registers for those who will receive cash transfers in the province.
“At the moment, our database has 26 000 who were receiving cash transfers. More than 60 percent of them are elderly followed by those who have disabilities, then child-headed families, chronically ill and socially distressed families,” said Ms Mlambo.
She said they classified socially distressed families as those families that may have both the father and mother but may be looking after orphans hence, the Government can intervene to provide food aid to them. —@nqotshili
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