Maravi

(TIMES) Easterners stare in the face of starvation

Easterners stare in the face of starvation
By Lizzy Ngobeka

AS the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) closed its maize buying exercise two months ago, records showed that Eastern Province had sold the largest amount of maize compared to any other province in the country this year. And Mkaika member of Parliament, David Phiri, who is also Information and Broadcasting Services deputy minister, confirmed that Government allocated the largest portion of money for maize buying to Eastern Province because of the huge maize production recorded in the province. The expectation is that the province will have sufficient food to see the people through to the next harvest season.

But contrary to this belief, Eastern Province faces an imminent serious hunger situation which, if not urgently addressed, would lead to starvation as some people are already surviving on wild fruits.

Recently, the Katete district disaster management committee went in the villages to assess the hunger situation on the ground and found that the situation was serious.

In an interview with ZANIS, committee chairman, Garry Siatwiinda, said people in the area did not have food and were depending on raw mangoes and wild fruits for survival.

Mr Siatwiinda added that locals were also selling the few ripe mangoes in the villages to raise money to buy small packs of mealie meal commonly known as ‘pamela’, which are sold at K3,000 each.

He said a good number of hunger-stricken people in Katete district were entering neighbouring Mozambique illegally to look for food, while others are engaged in piece work both in Zambia and in Mozambique. Mr Siatwiinda, who is also an agricultural officer, said the situation would affect the harvest for the current farming season because people were spending more time looking for food than farming.

The seriousness of the hunger situation in the province also came to the fore early in October when Mr Phiri toured Katete district and found that people in some parts of the district had already started feeding on wild fruits commonly known as Mpundu and roots known as Mpama.

At the public meetings the deputy minister conducted in various places in the district, several village head persons pleaded with Government to send relief food to the area before the onset of the rainy season. Songwe village headman told the minister that lives would be lost if relief food was not delivered to the area immediately.

Traditional rulers in the province, the likes of Chief Mbang’ombe, Katumba and Kawaza of Katete, Paramount Chief Mpezeni, Chief Msolo of Mambwe district, and many others, have also expressed worry at the looming hunger situation in the province.

And Katete district commissioner, Elemani Mwanza, says it has proved difficult for his office to solicit for relief food for Katete due to the notion that the province produced the largest amount of maize this year, beating eight other provinces in the country.

He said authorities from the Vice-President’s office found it difficult to believe that Katete, in particular, was hunger-stricken and yet this is the truth on the ground.

But where does the problem lie, that the highest maize-producing province should itself be on the brink of starvation.

While it is true that the province sold the largest quantity of maize to the FRA, it is also true that floods in the province during the previous rainy season destroyed most crops and the expected overall maize yield was adversely affected.

The question then is where did the large quantities of maize recorded to have been sold in the province come from.

This imbalance in the actual maize that was harvested in the province and the quantity of maize FRA bought needs to be rectified before it costs the country.

The contradiction could seriously mislead national planning authorities to think that the province has sufficient maize for consumption when in fact the local people were actually starving.

One may ask where all that maize came from when the farmers themselves were starving as early as October.

Zambia National Farmers Union (ZNFU) agriculture marketing officer for Katete district, Godwin Mumba, attributes the contradiction in the quantity of maize purchased by FRA in the district and the actual maize that was produced to the massive inflow of the grain from Mozambique and Malawi in search of the perceived good FRA maize price.

Mr Mumba said that some unscrupulous businesspersons went on rampage buying large quantities of maize from Mozambique and selling it to the FRA, who in turn thought the province had produced a lot of maize.

He also noted that some Mozambican and Malawian farmers were also selling their maize direct to the FRA in Katete and other parts of the province.

The ZNFU marketing officer further notes that the massive inflow of the crop from outside the country disadvantaged the local farmers as foreigners overloaded the FRA sheds before the locals could sell their crop.

He said the situation also posed a high risk of another invasion of the larger grain borer in the province like the previous year.

Chief Mbang’ombe agrees with Mr Mumba and has asked the Government not to be misled by the large quantities of maize bought by the FRA in Eastern Province and deny people relief food because the crop was coming from neighbouring countries.

The chief observed that some local business people were buying the crop from Mozambique and Malawi where it was cheaper and later sold the commodity to FRA in the province.

He urged the Government to halt all maize sales to neighbouring countries and ensure that people are fed first.

The chief suggested that Government should not take to Lusaka the maize in the FRA sheds in Eastern Province so that the same is given to the people as relief food.

An agriculture research officer for Lutheran World Federation in Katete, O’Brien Mashinkila, also admitted that the hunger cry by chiefs in the province was genuine.

He said due to poor maize yield in the province, the NGO failed to recover the seed and fertiliser loans it offered to farmers because of poor harvest.

And Katete District Commissioner, Elemani Mwanza, in part laid the blame on farmers themselves for lack of planning and their propensity to depend on relief food hand-outs.

He observed that farmers sold all the little they had harvested to FRA without reserving enough for their domestic consumption.

Mr Phiri (the MP) echoed the district commissioner’s concerns, urging people to be responsible and store enough maize for consumption before selling to the FRA.

He said it was a bad culture to always want to rely on relief food because one day there would be no relief food and people would starve to death.

The MP observed that there was no justification for people to rely on relief food when the Government was offering highly subsidised farming inputs to improve the agricultural sector.

He, however, assured the affected people that the MMD Government would send relief food to the province because of the seriousness of the situation.

The hunger situation in Eastern Province cannot be over-emphasised. The situation calls for quick action by the Government and other collaborating partners to save life in virtually all parts of the province.

The situation also comes as a reminder to the Government to strictly monitor the border points so that maize and other crops produced in neighbouring countries do not find their way on the Zambia crop market and distort the realities on the ground. —
ZANIS/Feature service.

Labels: FRA, KATETE, MAIZE

posted by MrK @ 1:43 PM