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Longido appeals for more relief food
2006-03-04 10:07:12
By Patrick Kisembo, Longido
Residents of the newly established district of Longido have urged the government to speed up the distribution of food as hundreds of people are still starving.
In an interview with The Guardian, some residents said authorities had distributed some aid food to villages twice but many of them are still experiencing some shortage.
Leison Stephen Mollel, a cook at Longido Primary School, explained that the amount of food distributed in both cases was insufficient. As a result, some people did not get the food at all, while some have failed to buy the available food as they don’t have enough money.
He added: ’’The best thing the government could do is to provide food for free since people have no money.’’
Longido Local Government Chairman Motika Kasosi said the village which is the headquarters of the new district was provided with 6 tonnes of maize in the first distribution and 7 tonnes in the second, ’’but the amount was not enough to go round since everybody is hungry here.’’
He said each household got 4 kilogrammes of maize in the first distribution and 5 kilogrammes in the second, which could only last for a day.
According to an official directive each person in the family is supposed to get 12 kilogrammes of maize. For the Longido case, each family and not each single person, received 4 or 5 kilogrammes.
’’All that was provided was maize. There were no beans being provided by either the government nor any NGO,’’ he said.
Longido township has more than 8,000 people, the majority of whom are pastoralists whose heads of cattle have died of drought.
The Guardian established that food prices have shot up in the market. A tin of 20 kgs of beans goes for 20,000/-, up from 5,000/- while a kilogramme of sugar sells at 1,000/- from 400/-. Maize flour is sold at 800/- per kg from 250/-.
The Longido Ward Councilor, Makoro Saruni, explained that the hunger situation at his ward was the worst since his people depended on livestock.
Now, as the livestock have all but died, nobody is capable of buying food. And if they do sell they only sell hides, which are of low quality and therefore fetch low prices, he said.
The councillor said the food shortage has caused very serious hunger related diseases to children and mothers.
’’You have seen today we have buried two people. It is not easy to directly say they died of hunger, but anybody in this village will tell you that hunger is related to the cause of their deaths,’’ he said.
He emphasised that there is no agricultural activity going on in the area since 1998 after the El Nino rains.
’’That was the last time people cultivated. Since then no one has taken to agriculture because of insufficient rainfall,’’ he noted.
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