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| National |
| One million face hunger in Malawi |
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by
Pilirani Semu-Banda, 09 July 2004
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10:12:10
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The disclosure by World Food Programme (WFP) that more than one million people are facing hunger has put government on its toes, leading to a meeting on Wednesday to come up with a road-map to defuse the threat.
Secretary for Agriculture Charles Matabwa said yesterday the meeting has come up with answers to the impending disaster.
“No one will starve,” said Matabwa.
WFP’s website, however, indicates that the United Nations agency will begin distributing food aid to about 250,000 people next month and hopes to cater for more than one million beneficiaries by early 2005.
The organisation, which is already feeding about 5,000 severely malnourished children and their caretakers in special units across the country and giving extra rations to 18,000 moderately malnourished children and 10,000 pregnant or nursing mothers, said the hunger situation follows drought and flooding which hit the country’s farming sector.
The website further indicates that WFP has completed a 20-month railway repair and improvement programme to allow large quantities of food aid to be transported without interruption into Malawi from Mozambique.
“WFP has earmarked 55,000 metric tonnes for such interventions. The figure could increase or decrease based on the situation on the ground in terms of maize prices, availability and ability of poor households to have access to it,” states WFP.
The country was faced with a prolonged dry spell and this badly hit the maize crop in the South as the rainy season started late, limiting the areas that farmers in the South and Centre were able to plant.
In his address to Parliament on June 28, President Bingu wa Mutharika told Parliament that the government would obtain at least 160,000 metric tons of maize locally and from neighbouring countries to avert a possible crisis.
A survey by the Consortium for Southern Africa Food Security Emergency, which started two years ago in response to the food crisis in Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe, said last month that more than half of Malawian households face starvation from this month because food from the harvest is running out.
The survey’s analysis report by the district shows that about nine out of 10 families in Thyolo, Chikwawa, Karonga and Rumphi fall within the three months range. But the report said people in Thyolo, Nkhatabay, Rumphi and Zomba may be affected more seriously than those in other districts because they have fewer alternative means of getting food.
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