5 March 2008
Maputo — More than 250,000 people who have been affected by the recent flooding in central Mozambique are in need of humanitarian assistance, at least until the end of March, according to a study by the Technical Secretariat for Food and Nutritional Security (SETSAN), cited in Wednesday's issue of the Maputo daily "Noticias".
The same report estimates that this number may drop to 226,500 in April and May, because some of the affected people may by then have begun to recover from the shock and displacement caused by the floods.
The study identified not only households who had lost homes, fields and livestock this year, but also those who had been resettled after the floods of 2001 and 2007, and who now found that resettlement areas in the Tete district of Mutarara were not built on high enough ground, and had to move again.
However, SETSAN thought that the effectiveness of early warning systems on rainfall, the level of the rivers, and the discharges from the Cahora Bassa dam, as well as the training of local risk management committees for quick response, helped attenuate the impact of this year's floods.
SETSAN believed the declaration of a red alert by the country's relief agency, the National Disasters Management Institute (INGC), allowed the timely activation of response plans and the concentration of humanitarian rescue actions in the four river basins affected by the floods.
The study also showed that the victims immediately received a minimum of basic assistance in the places where they found shelter. Food assistance for the victims began in December and is still being distributed in almost all affected districts.
However, the report also found an insufficient supply of foodstuffs and drinking water in the resettlement centres, added to the chronic problem of poor sanitation, expressed in the low numbers of latrines built, considering the total size of the population in the centres.
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