Editorial Comment: Educate villagers on dangers of living in low lying areas

IT is the time of the year again when people living in low-lying areas look at the sky with mixed feelings. This is because like everyone else they need rains to carry out farming activities to feed themselves and their families as well as use water for domestic use. At the same time the gathering of the rain clouds send shivers down the spines of many because of the dangers that come with flash floods, which have become annual visitors in their areas.

The areas that quickly come into mind when one talks about floods in Zimbabwe are Tsholotsho in Matabeleland North and Muzarabani in Mashonaland Central. However, last year the people of Chivi in Masvingo were not spared by the floods, a situation which saw them being relocated.

In yesterday’s issue of our sister paper, Chronicle it was reported that Matabeleland North Province has activated its disaster preparedness committee to deal with potential flooding situations. The Matabeleland North provincial administrator, Latiso Dlamini was quoted as saying the province was ready to deal with disasters. Dlamini said the Provincial Civil Protection Unit held a meeting recently to prepare for disasters and engaged villagers in low lying areas on how to respond to the floods. She said they had activated the committees right to district level for the smooth flow of information.

We believe the move by the Matabeleland North Civil Protection Unit is timely if one looks at what happened in February this year when 250 people in Tsholotsho were at the risk of being swept away by flash floods and it took the timely intervention of the Air Force of Zimbabwe to save the situation when it moved into some areas that were inaccessible by road to evacuate the villagers mainly from Mahlosi, Mathuphula, Maphili and Mambanjeni areas.

Although the situation in Tsholotsho was not as dire as the one in Chivi, a number of people who included Government ministers came on board to lend assistance and the business community was not left out either with Choppies Supermarket donating groceries worth more than $30 000 to the flood victims.

It is against this background that we should give praise to the Matabeleland North Civil Protection Unit for not leaving everything to chance. It should be noted that floods are a natural event that can have far reaching effects on the lives of people and the environment and there is a need for stakeholders to be prepared all the time.

It is therefore important that appropriate measures are taken when dealing with the issue of floods and that correct information is relayed to those who might suffer from the consequences of floods so that precaution is taken to limit the damage that might be caused by the floods.

However, while we believe that it is the duty of the Government to reduce the impact of floods, everyone especially the villagers also have an important role to play. Villagers also have a responsibility to protect their homes and families instead of leaving everything to the Government. We find it disturbing that when some people are warned against living in low-lying areas they are up to now still refusing to move with some saying they could not leave graves of their ancestors, while others say they cannot leave the fertile soils. Such a situation, however, needs to be handled with care.

The Government officials should come up with ways of convincing the villagers to leave these low-lying areas and this could be done through massive awareness campaigns about the dangers of living in low-lying areas because we cannot continue talking about the same thing every year.