KALOMO GETS 300 METRIC TONNES OF RELIEF FOOD

By Martin Mashekwa, ZANIS Kalomo  

THE second consignment of 300 metric tonnes of relief food under the Office of the Vice President through the Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit (DMMU) meant for Kalomo is scheduled to be distributed to the hunger affected areas by the end of next week.

This came to light during a disaster management meeting held yesterday chaired by Kalomo District Commissioner Joshua Sikaduli and attended by council chairperson Coy Makaya and other stakeholders.

District disaster officer Simunyeu Simunyeu says this follows the formation of the 129 satellite centres to facilitate the identification of beneficiaries in the 20 wards of the district.

The consignment is targeting the vulnerable who get 20 percent of the commodity while 80 per cent is food for work.

Kalomo has 41,580 rural households that are in need of food. So far 10,197 households hit by the drought have benefited from the emergency cash transfer alongside 14,399 who are on the traditional social cash transfer scheme in the district.

Other cooperating partners such as Care International and Namwianga Church of Christ have also come on board to assist the hunger affected communities with food.

Meanwhile, the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) is to establish additional nine satellite maize rural depots from the existing 31 in the district to lessen the long distances rural masses encounter to purchase maize through FRA community sales component in the outskirts.

And in another development, 2,400 households have been targeted to benefit from the emergency wetlands programme, District Community Development Officer, Bright Chooma has disclosed.

Mr. Chooma says this is to assist beneficiaries grow early maturity maize varieties this month that can be harvested in three months’ time.