Paul Fauvet
9 February 2008
Maputo — The director of the Mozambican government's relief agency, the National Disasters Management Institute (INGC), Paulo Zucula, on Friday warned that problems with financial management and coordination could damage the current operations to assist victims of flooding in the central provinces.
Addressing a session of the Disaster Management Coordinating Council, chaired by President Armando Guebuza, in the town of Caia, on the south bank of the Zambezi, Zucula warned that, although the flood situation is currently under control, it was tending to deteriorate.
Fluctuations in the levels of the main rivers led some families to abandon the government's resettlement areas and return to the flood plains. As a result "some people have had to be evacuated and supported at least twice", said Zucula..
Furthermore, the flooding could worsen. The rainy season does not end until March, and the Kariba dam, on the Zimbabwe/Zambia border, has given notice that on Monday, 11 February, it will open one of its four floodgates. That will send a flood surge down the Zambezi, and may well force the Cahora Bassa dam to increase its discharges, thus worsening the flooding in the Mozambican provinces of Manica, Tete, Sofala and Zambezia.
"The situation could get much worse", said Zucula, "with increased needs for evacuation and support".
He criticized the trend to worry more about food supply than basic sanitation in the resettlement areas, pointing out that a cholera outbreak could have disastrous consequences. "Lack of hygiene kills many more people than hunger does"|, he pointed out.
He called for tighter coordination of the relief effort, and attacked "the lack of strict criteria for using the funds for the Contingency Plan" (he was referring to the plans for dealing with disasters that the INGC drew up in October, and is now putting into effect).
"If the situation does worsen, and we continue with the current way of managing funds and time, added to the weaknesses in coordination, then we may lose control of the situation", warned Zucula.
He added that the INGC is trying "to ratonalise what we possess in terms of money, tents and food".
He noted that the current floods on the Zambezi are already worse than those of 2001. The floods on the Save and Buzi rivers are the worst since Mozambican independence in 1975, while the flood on the Pungue, west of Beira, is approaching historically high levels.
As was clear from overflying the Zambezi valley, the Zambezi and its largest tributary, the Shire, have bust their banks in a massive fashion, with water spreading out for kilometers in all directions, forming a vast shallow lake, where it is hard to detect the original river bed. Maps of the flooded valley show that the current disaster is approaching the worst case scenario drawn up by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).
Zucula said the number of people directly affected by the flooding was now 95,278 - this figure refers to those who have lost their homes, and does not include those who have only lost crops. The evacuation operations have kept the death toll low: Zucula said there were now nine confirmed deaths.
A further 5,608 people had been affected by localized flooding caused by torrential rains outside of the main river basin. Most of these are in Mogovolas district, in the northern province of Nampula.
Zucula put the number of homes destroyed at 21,326. 119 wells and boreholes, and 689 latrines had been submerged. 475 classrooms were under water, affecting over 72,000 pupils. The current estimate for damage to agriculture is that 117,308 hectares of crops have been lost.
The number of people requiring food aid - 150,108 - is many more than those living in the resettlement areas. So far, 118,021 of these have benefited from food distribution (mostly maize, beans and vegetable oil).
The government has approved expenditure of 80.2 million meticais (about 3.4 million US dollars) on implementing actions in the INGC contingency plan. But so far only 20 million meticais has been disbursed.
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