CHANDA KABWE TIPS GOVT ON HUNGER

PEOPLE will die if the Government fails to mobilize all available human, financial, and material resources to avert the looming hunger situation in the country, former Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit (DMMU) National Coordinator Chanda Kabwe has said.

In an interview, Mr Chanda said the Government should start providing food security packs as well as emergency social support to the people especially those in rural areas, adding that over 2 million people were at risk of hunger or food insecurity in Zambia this year.

He suggested that the Government should start community sensitization on the effects of climate change and start providing relief food and strengthening conservation farming.

The former DMMU National Coordinator disclosed that over 80 percent of smallholder crop production was rain-fed and that this had been exposed to changed rainfall patterns characterised by droughts.

He said small-scale farmers need access to climate information, adequate extension services, and risk transfer or insurance cover.

He noted that there was a need for the Government to introduce appropriate technologies for small-scale farmers to enhance household food security by bringing partners such as the United Nations system and NGOs and all private sectors on board.

“The current Government should have solutions to climate change by starting to invest in human resources as well as in human capacity building so that they can try and look at this climate change issue. If this climate change is not taken seriously, people will die of hunger because it has affected normal rainfall patterns,” Mr. Kabwe said.

He said the Government made a big mistake in transferring people who were trained on how to deal with issues of climate change, particularly those who were in human resources management.

He claimed that currently, the people that were in offices did not have adequate information apart from the knowledge on the paper and that most of them were coming from the private sector.

He noted that although the Government had maintained the people at the Meteorological Department, they could not give full information apart from giving early warning over the rainfall patterns.

“One of the challenges that we have is the improper quality of human resources and there is a policy in Government for somebody to get to a level of Director. Therefore, this is why the country is now facing such challenges and when we have people who know it all, it’s very difficult to advise,” he said.