The United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) started handing out emergency food aid on Tuesday to about 6 000 flood-hit Mozambicans and said their needs could become more desperate.
WFP officials said the flooding of the Zambezi river had compounded food woes in the Southern African country where thousands were already in need of aid.
”We will start the distribution as from today … some people are starving,” said WFP spokesperson Jack Siamen.
”What we expect is that even if the waters go down many people have lost their crops and food becomes a problem. Therefore we will have to extend our feeding programmes.”
About 68 000 Mozambicans have been made homeless after waters swept away their homes and 280 000 more may be forced to evacuate this week, a disaster relief official said on Monday.
The head of the national relief agency INGC said on Tuesday the stream of victims had put pressure on crowded refugee camps, already home to more than 30 000 people.
”Food, diseases and shelter are now major problems in the accommodation centres. We need to feed the people,” INGC director Paulo Zucula said.
”Despite the devastation the situation is under control, and we cannot think of an emergency appeal. But we need money.”
The floods, fuelled by rains from neighbouring Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi pouring into the overflowing Cahora Bassa Dam, have killed 29 people and damaged thousands of homes and schools, mainly in the central Zambezia and Sofala provinces.
Officials said that while rains appeared to be tapering off, the possibility that flood gates would be opened further upstream could mean more problems for residents of areas in the flood plain.
Experts fear the crisis could surpass the floods of 2000 and 2001, which killed 700 people, displaced half a million and wrecked infrastructure.
Boats and aircraft have been used to move people from flooded regions around the Zambezi river, many with little more than the clothes on their backs.
But relocation centres have in some cases offered little improvement. Officials say they are short of drinking water, food and proper shelters.
Zucula said the government was working on a long-term plan to permanently resettle refugees from flood-hit areas, many of whom have been forced from their homes several times in recent years due to flooding.
But he said there was no immediate solution in sight to the problem, which has seen local residents in search of fertile land for subsistence farming repeatedly move back to flood-prone areas. – Reuters