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Takunda Maodza Manicaland Bureau Chief

THE donor community, which has been providing people in Chimanimani and Chipinge districts with food aid following the devastating effects of Cyclone Idai, has indicated it will be stopping giving out handouts in favour of “food for work” schemes.

The argument is that giving people food for free is not sustainable. Most people lost their grain and other food reserves when the disaster struck.

They have been depending on hand outs for survival. Donors are complementing Government efforts in the affected areas since March 15 this year when the districts were ravaged by the cyclone.

The Herald visited Chimanimani and Chipinge last week where the information has since been relayed to the victims by the donors.

The World Food Programme (WFP) had for the past three months been giving food aid to the victims of the cyclone through the Zimbabwe Red Cross Society but is stopping end of this month.

This was confirmed by the Zimbabwe Red Cross Society secretary-general Mr Maxwell Phiri.

“We have a partnership with the World Food Programme which we are now utilizing as the main response tool to support the various communities,” he said. “We have nine wards which we are in and were the most affected, which we are giving food hand-outs. We are giving 13,5 kg maize meal per individual in a household, beans and cooking oil.

“We have not moved into cash programming because we notice markets have not yet bounced back. This is why we are giving food in kind, but as we go we have to look at what other modalities are being utilised. So the response itself is in phases.

“The first phase was the emergency response. The next phase is the recovery phase is the recovery phase.

I think this was also announced by Government that we need to start recovery activities.

“The Red Cross is now looking at such activities as the food for asset kind of programming where we are saying as we are programming the people should now be moved from that element of just receiving to an element where they try to rehabilitate their own communities and then use those resources to ensure that they start rebuilding in their own communities.

“We assist them identify the things that they want recovered in their communities and then we provide food. It is like food for work programme.”

Mr Phiri said certain categories of people will continue receiving food handouts.

“But we also take note that not everybody is able bodied. We have people who have chronic illness and people living with disabilities,” he said.

“We have the elderly in those particular communities. We will continue giving them food rations but this is now determined against the vulnerability status as a result of the cyclone.”

Councillor Tendai Nyabanga Ward 16 in the affected area confirmed the food hand-outs were coming to an end.

“We were getting food aid from WFP. They have been assisting us for the past three months without any problems.

They have, however, told us they were stopping food handouts end of this month. We do not know why they are stopping maybe they have other plans for us,” said Clr Nyabanga.

WFP was giving people maize meal, cooking oil, beans and porridge for children under the age of five.

Chimanimani District Administrator Mr John Misi indicated that besides food aid they were a number of programmes on the ground.

“They are a number of activities on the ground like the cash for work programmes giving people the opportunity to rehabilitate damaged assets in their communities. They will work around their assets like repairing roads, small bridges and dip tanks,” he said.

Efforts to get a comment from WFP were fruitless.