OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Thursday 12.30pm.
AT least 84 people have died this month in Mozambique’s worst natural disasters in nearly 50 years, but government officials said on Thursday the final death toll is likely to be much higher.
Flooded roads, smashed bridges, collapsed power lines and severed telephone links have made it impossible to gather accurate figures on the human and material cost of floods earlier this month and Cyclone Eline which struck on Tuesday.
The government, which has won international plaudits for economic reforms which made it one of Africa’s budding success stories, has appealed for at least 65 million dollars for humanitarian and reconstruction aid.
It says some 800000 people have been affected by the disasters. Thousands of hectares of agricultural and ranching land have been turned into vast lakes.
The UN’s World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates 220000 people have been displaced.
Meanwhile, at least 12 people have been killed in South Africa’s Northern Province in flooding caused by heavy rains brought by the cyclone.
Ten people were killed and at least 20 injured in the Giyani and Louis Trichardt areas, near the borders with Mozambique and Zimbabwe, when their traditional mud homes collapsed on them, police said.
In neighbouring Zimbabwe, a state of emergency has been declared in three provinces after floods related to Cyclone Eline killed at least five people and left about 250000 homeless.
The cyclone has also added to the woes of Zimbabwe’s motorists, preventing a ship carrying fuel from docking at Mozambique’s Indian Ocean port of Beira, exacerbating a shortage of petrol and diesel in the country.