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Mozambique: Guebuza in Zambezi Valley
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
8 February 2008
Posted to the web 8 February 2008
Paul Fauvet
Matilde
Mozambican president Armando Guebuza on Friday overflew the flooded Zambezi Valley, and visited two resettlement areas for flood victims.
Vast areas of the lower Zambezi valley are under water, so much so that it is sometimes difficult to detect the main channel of the river. Roofs of huts poke above the muddy waters, that have obliterated homes, roads and crops.
In Mutarara district, Guebuza visited the Charre resettlement area. Here he was impressed by brick houses under construction by many of the victims, using locally produced bricks, and cement brought in from the factory in Dondo, Sofala province.
The second, and much more recent centre, at Matilde, in Chinde district, near the mouth of the Zambezi, was very different. Here there were no bricks or cement. The 2,000 of so people living in Matilde are in tiny grass huts.
To the visiting journalists, they complained of a shortage of almost everything, particularly of food. The rations of rice they had been given, they said, would run out in a few days. The nearest source of clean drinking water was three kilometers away.
Mosquito nets have been distributed at Matilde, but there are not enough yet to protect each household from malaria.
In both Charre and Matilde, Guebuza told the flood victims that they should build decent, houses, preferably of brick, in the resettlement areas, and only use the flood plain for farming.
He stressed that the Zambezi is a source of immense wealth for Mozambique, largely because of its hydroelectric potential, but in the rainy season," it causes problems, invading our houses and fields without our permission".
The long-term solution, Guebuza said, was to tame the river by building more dams. It would be the job of those who are now children to complete that task.
In Matilde, and other Chinde resettlement areas, people have returned to the flood plain, when they believe the river has subsided. But the rainy season does not end until March, and so the danger is far from over.
Guebuza compared those who return to the flood plain to chickens that run straight into the path of an oncoming car.
"Don't be stubborn. This is your government and it is working for you", he said.
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According to the government's relief agency, the National Disasters Management Institute (INGC), the number of people displaced by the floods, as of 31 January, was 95,278, about 82,000 in the Zambezi valley, and smaller numbers in the Buzi, Pungue and Save valleys. So far, nine deaths have been confirmed.
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| Copyright © 2008 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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