SEVERE hunger continues to stalk villagers in Matobo district in Matabeleland South amid reports that drought relief food supplied by the government and the donor community is falling to meet demand.
Staff Reporter
About 108 000 villagers in Matobo are reportedly surviving on food handouts as the area has not recorded normal harvests over the past years.
In an interview yesterday, Matobo Rural District Council chairman Watchy Sibanda said the local authority was appealing for more donors to intervene.
“As a council we still have to campaign for more donors to chip in and assist because the situation is bad in terms of food shortages and the continued absence of rains has not helped the situation,” he said.
Sibanda said so far three donor organisations — Christian Care, Organisation of Rural Associations for Progress (ORAP) and World Vision — were already doling out food handouts and farming inputs to complement government’s grain loan scheme.
“Christian Care is mostly targeting vulnerable people such as the elderly, orphans and the less privileged,” he said. “But food shortage is still serious in the district and we are still calling for more donors to assist.
“ORAP is helping the villagers to develop their own infrastructures such as dams, dip tanks and irrigation schemes.”
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Sibanda said the donors had assisted the district so much in efforts to curb the food crisis, which continues to rock the district though many families were not benefiting from them.
“The grain loan scheme from GMB (Grain Maketing Board) has very erratic deliveries. GMB sometime takes more than a month to deliver maize to the district,” he said.
Sibanda said even the deliveries made by GMB to the district were inadequate as only 42 families benefited from each consignment leaving a lot of people out.
