Moomba Member of Parliament (MP) Vitalis Mooya has asked the government to take relief food to his constituency to save the lives of starving residents following a poor farming season in Southern province.
Mooya said over 70 per cent of the people in his constituency were faced with hunger and starvation, but the government could move in quickly and save the lives.
He said in Lusaka that generally, hunger would be widespread in Southern province because of the poor rainfall pattern in the previous farming season, but this was exacerbated by the government’s failure to implement good and appropriate agricultural policies.
“Farming is the backbone of Southern province, but this government spent the whole time politicking instead of planning and learning how to deal with farming. The rainfall was bad, but this is natural.
Instead of dealing with the challenge, the government went ahead and mismanaged the distribution of farming inputs. They supplied bottom dressing fertilizer at the time when the farmers need top dressing materials. This is what has made the problem bigger,” he said.
Mooya who has been MP for Moomba since 2001 said people in his constituency resorted to feeding on wild tubers and the fear was that some of the roots could be poisonous.
He said the problem of food shortage and hunger was expected to worsen later in the year when food stocks reduce around the country.
Mooya said the government through the Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit under the office of the vice president must do a very quick assessment and assist the people of Moomba.
He said the time to start responding to the problem of hunger around the country was now before the DMMU could be inundated by urgent supplies of relief food from the country, which was eminent.
“This is the right time to start working because very soon, many parts of the country will start asking for food and the DMMU would have no capacity to respond to everyone and they can be seen to be inefficient,” he said.
Mooya is a soft spoken former director of engineering in the Ministry of Works and Supply who lived a quiet life, but he became popular in 2003 when the late president Mwanawasa asked the police to arrest him after he alleged that two people had died of hunger in his constituency. This caused a political feud by between the government and opposition UPND but later the two parties established dialogue and relied food was sent to Moomba constituency.
During an interview in Lusaka, Mooya said the DMMU must be proactive and not reactive to emergency situations. He said the DMMU was aware of the impending hunger in many parts of Zambia.
Mooya said he would work closely with the DMMU in an effort to ensure that resources were mobilised quickly and respond to the plight of the people before the situation could degenerate into a disaster.
Recently, deputy Minister in the office of the vice president Harry Kalaba conducted an assessment tour of the hunger problem in Southern province where he promised to send relief food.
Some of the areas he visited include Magoye and Pemba where there was crop failure but the government has not sent the promised relief food.
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