(TALKZIMBABWE) Gvt bans free food handouts by NGOs

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

(TALKZIMBABWE) Gvt bans free food handouts by NGOs

Gvt bans free food handouts by NGOs
Our reporter
Wed, 17 Feb 2010 01:17:00 +0000

THE Government of Zimbabwe has banned all food handouts by NGOs and has introduced food-for-work programmes in the country. The decision was announced by Minister of Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development, Joseph Made last week.

Made said the main motivation was to ensure "critical infrastructure development and rehabilitation in affected areas". He added that in the next farming season, priority would be given to cloud seeding, a basic aspect of food security planning.

Food-for-work programmes would be implemented in the notified districts during periods of natural calamities, such as drought, flood, cyclone or earthquake.

"The Government is making adequate drought mitigating measures to ensure that no Zimbabwean starves in the advent of projected food deficit in this season," said Made.

"However, Cabinet has agreed that none of the affected communities will access free food or inputs.

“In the same vein, no NGO will be allowed to doll out free food. We are re-introducing the food or inputs-for-work programme to ensure that our communities do not lag behind developmentally."

Made added that there would be no going back on the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe's announcement that all beneficiaries of the mechanisation programme should pay up their arrears after harvesting.

He said an irrigation fund would be established with the support of both the Government and the private sector.

"That is that, everyone will have to pay, no excuses. This will be a good lesson to those farmers who have been sitting on the machinery and equipment.

“This is the only way to compel them to take it seriously and use the machinery for productive purposes," he said.

The minister added that the Government would also resuscitate cloud seeding at the beginning of the next season and onwards.

"This is because it has proven that it brings rains.

“We will do it formally and structurally right at the beginning of each agricultural season," he said.

Cabinet has adopted mitigatory strategies to counter the effects of the dry spell that hit most parts of Zimbabwe in January and left crops wilting.

The measures include ensuring a Strategic Grain Reserve while the Government awaits results of the national crop assessment.

Results of the crop assessment, being conducted by the Government and the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation, are expected next week.

Government and NGOs were on a collision course in the run-up to the 2008 harmonised elections as NGOs were said to be campaigning for the MDC-T party and its leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

NGOs were briefly banned from operating in the rural areas during the 2008 elections.

Labels: JOSEPH MADE, MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE MECHANISATION AND IRRIGATION (ZIMBABWE), NGOs