Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai on Wednesday told Parliament that recent crop assessments indicated villagers in five of the countrys 10 provinces face starvation.
He said this in the House of Assembly while answering a question by Masvingo Central MP Jefferyson Chitando (MDC-T) who wanted to know about government policy in terms of drought mitigation, especially when food distribution was being done in a partisan manner.
I was in Zaka over the weekend, Tsvangirai said. The drought situation was quite evident and the crop assessment also indicated areas such as Manicaland, Masvingo, Matabeleland, Midlands and the Lowveld in Muzarabani are affected.
In our discussions as government we have come to the conclusion that even if we give grain loans to the people, there is no way they can be able to pay back and so we are now moving from the grain loan scheme to drought mitigation.
Tsvangirai said the main obstacle was to ensure logistical issues such as transport were solved.
We have to ensure transport is available to move grain throughout the country and we are reviewing mechanisms of distributing that grain because the current ones are open to abuse.
We also want to make sure whatever mechanisms we use should be able to respond to (the needs of) urban households so that we reach everyone, he said.
The PM said no one should starve and also took a swipe at recent reports that politicians were cancelling operating licences of non-governmental organisations.
