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Member of Parliament for Mangochi Malombe Maxwell Milanzi— in whose constituency six family members died on Tuesday after eating wild yams— has pleaded with government to move in fast to check the food shortage in the area to avoid more of such cases.
Milanzi in an interview Thursday said according to the food situation in the area there was a “very high possibility that the six died because they had nothing to eat”.
“If it was for fun as it has been put I do not think the whole family, including grownups, could have taken the wild yams. In a situation where there is hunger people turn to eat whatever comes their way,” he said.
Milanzi said Malombe area has been severely affected because apart from the prolonged dry spell that hit the whole country elephants also destroyed people’s crops.
He said the dry spell also affected the rice crop, which most people turn to in times of maize failure, because rice-growing dambos were left dry.
“People in the area have been asking me that government should move in fast. Although some people have completely nothing and urgently need food assistance, we would also urge government to make maize available in the commercial markets for sale to assist those who can afford,” he added.
Soon after the death of the six children, police in Mangochi said the wild yams were collected by a four-year-old boy for fun.
But the mother of the children, Lumiyo Abudu, contradicted the police statement, saying the wild yams were collected by a 19-year-old boy who needed some food.
“The boy was moulding bricks and when he felt hungry he went to a nearby garden to look for the yams (mapeta) which we had planted but he did not know that he had mixed the planted yams with these wild ones,” explained Abudu from her hospital bed at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH) in Blantyre.
The mother could not say whether the children ate the wild yams due to food shortage in the family but admitted that there was critical food shortage in the area.
She said some families in the area did not harvest anything while her family of 10 members had only two 50 kilogrammes of maize.
Commissioner for disaster preparedness Randson Mwadiwa said his department was waiting for a Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee (MVAC) report to know which areas are severely hit and need urgent assistance.
He indicated that the MVAC report would be released Friday but said a quick vulnerability assessment done earlier did not show Mangochi as among critically hit area.
Mwadiwa said rough estimates indicate that the country would need 150,000 to 200,000 metric tonnes of relief maize but he could not say how much government has in the strategic grain reserves.
“What we know is that we have some food in excess of 60,000 metric tonnes and that would be able to take us up to December,” he said.
Principal Secretary for Agriculture Andrew Daudi, who described the situation as sad and unfortunate, said the MVAC report was ready.
Government has been brushing aside calls from the civil society as well as a parliamentary committee on agriculture for a state of disaster to be declared due to a looming critical food shortage.
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