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DAM-L Malawian villagers refuse relocation from flood-prone valley/LS (fwd)
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Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2001 11:44:38 -0800
To: irn-safrica@netvista.net
From: Ryan Hoover <ryan@irn.org>
Subject: Malawian villagers refuse relocation from flood-prone valley/LS
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Malawian villagers refuse relocation from flood-prone valley
Tuesday, December 11, 2001
Villagers in the flood-prone Lower Shire Valley in southern Malawi have
rejected a government plan to resettle them upland, despite a fresh warning
of more floods during the 2001/2002 rainy season.
The villagers, mainly peasant farmers claim they would become destitute if
resettled upland. But Donald Kamdonyo, Director of the meteorological
Department, warned that Malawi would receive an average to above-average
rainfall this season, making floods, especially in the Lower Shire Valley
districts of Chikwawa and Nsanje, almost predictable.
According to statistics from the Department of Disaster Preparedness,
Relief and Rehabilitation, at least 157,000 households in Chikwawa and
60,000 households in Nsanje were devastated by last year's floods, which
also affected 12 other districts countrywide.
At least, five people were killed by collapsed houses, while an undisclosed
number of others died following crocodile attacks in the valley. When the
River Shire, Malawi's biggest and longest, bust its banks, the marauding
man-eating reptiles were washed into the Chikwawa and Nsanje villages,
where they attacked people and livestock.
But Chief Joseph Kwenje of Sekeni Village in Chikwawa, where many houses
were destroyed during the floods, said his village was not moving anywhere
because of its fertile arable land. Sekani Village grows bananas, pumpkins,
potatoes and other crops.
Kwenje said the village harvested the staple food, maize, twice a year
because of its alluvial soil which requires no artificial fertiliser.
"If it was not for our gardens, where we produce lots of bananas, pumpkins,
potatoes, maize and other crops, we would have heeded Honourable Harry
Thomson and the DC's advice to move away, but where do we go?" asked Kwenje.
He said agriculture is the main income generating activity in the area and
if his subjects were forced to move upland they would become destitute,
living on perpetual hand-outs from government. The area government wants us
to move to is not populated because of its barren soils," he charged.
Environmental Affairs Minister Harry Thomson, who hails from Chikwawa, and
the District Commissioner Kiswell Dakamau, have been impressing upon the
people to move upland to no avail.
"We are trying to reason with the villagers to move upland for their own
good," Dakamau said. Chikuni also said there was no sense in people
refusing to leave flood-prone areas, knowing that they could be hit by
floods any time.
"It will be difficult to convince donors every year for relief funds, when
the permanent solution could have been moving people upland," he said,
adding however, that there would be no forced movement.But agriculturists
fear that government lacks enough fund to resettle the peasants and support
them permanently with hands- outs.
Panafrica News Agency
Ryan Hoover
Africa Campaigns
International Rivers Network
1847 Berkeley Way
Berkeley, CA 94703
USA
Phone: (510) 848-1155 Fax: (510) 848-1008
www.irn.org
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