Johannesburg — A UN spokeswoman in Mozambique told IRIN on Tuesday that a warning by Zambia that it may be forced to open spillway gates on the Kariba dam would be "disastrous" for Mozambique, battling with rising flood waters downstream in the Zambezi valley.
The spokeswoman for the UN Resident Coordinator's Office in Mozambique, Frances Christie, told IRIN that Mozambique's Cahora Bassa dam had reached peak capacity and had increased its discharge rate into the Zambezi river valley to 9,000 cubic metres a second, up from 7,500 cubic metres. If more water from Kariba entered Cahora Bassa, more would have to be discharged "and that's just going to make the situation downriver disastrous", she said.
The 'Times of Zambia' reported Celestino Chibamba, deputy minister of energy and water development as saying on Monday: "We sympathize with our Mozambican counterpart, but the danger is that if the water is not discharged from the dam, we fear that the damage to be done to the dam might result in ... lots of disasters." He added that the Zambian government would try to help minimise the impact on Mozambique.
Currently two spill gates on Kariba are open to ease the pressure on the dam as it struggles to cope with rising water levels as a result of heavy rains across the region, news reports said. Mozambique had earlier appealed to Zambia not to open any more, so as not to aggravate flooding in the centre of the country which has displaced 77,000 people and affected 400,000 since January. At least 41 people have died.
Flood waters swamped low-lying areas of Mozambique's major northwestern town of Tete on Tuesday, 100 km downstream from Cahora Bassa, news reports said. Tete is home to around 100,000 people. In the rest of the river valley, the government estimates that 105,000 people are at potential risk, Christie said. Several thousand have been evacuated in the past few weeks by the Mozambican navy and transported to accommodation centres mainly in Caia and Mutarara. Some 13,200 displaced have been registered in Caia, with 18,400 displaced people in the district as a whole. Humanitarian relief efforts have concentrated on evacuating people from around the towns of Marromeu and Luabo.
WFP said in a report on Monday that food stocks were ready to supply 80,000 people. The agency added that reports from the field suggested that the Pungue river, which crosses Manica and Sofala provinces from Zimbabwe, had burst its banks, severing road access to the port city of Beira. Further south, the Save river is also on alert breaking its banks in several places and threatening 30,000 people. The level of the Save has risen and fallen repeatedly over the past few weeks.
"The situation is expected to worsen with heavy downpours forecast not only in central Mozambique but also in neighbouring Zambia, Malawi and Zimbabwe, whose swollen rivers flow directly into Mozambique," the WFP report said.
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe's Civil Protection Unit told IRIN on Tuesday that a comprehensive damage assessment of the flood-hit northeast of the country had been constrained by swamped roads. CPU deputy Sibusisiwe Ndhlovu said air force helicopters had airlifted tents, food and blankets to 16,000 people in the Guruve and Muzavavani areas of Mashonaland central, along the borders with Mozambique and Zambia, forced from their homes by heavy rains and the backwash of the Zambezi river. The affected communities were sheltering in schools and public buildings in the area.
Zambia
People stranded by flooding in Zambia's eastern Luangwa region have received no food aid for weeks since access roads to the region were cut, AFP quoted a cabinet minister as saying on Tuesday. Fidelis Mando, Zambia's information and broadcasting deputy minister and an MP for Luangwa, said food destined for 15,000 flood victims had not yet arrived. He added that water levels were, however, slowly subsiding.
