VP says post-disaster needs assessment ready
Malawi Vice-President Saulos Chilima says the report of the post-disaster needs assessment undertaken with support from cooperating partners to determine the socio-economic impact of floods is now ready.
Chilima said this in Blantyre on Monday on the sidelines of a three-day World Vision Malawi (WVM) Disaster Response Review Workshop that is discussing and reviewing lessons learnt from the floods disaster Malawi experienced in January this year.
Said Chilima: “This also means that the Government of Malawi cannot manage to deal with this alone without the support from our development partners to recover from the flood disaster as well as reconstruct the damaged infrastructure and people’s livelihoods.”
However, he could not give more details as to how much the country needs to address the damages and losses as he was yet to discuss the report with President Peter Mutharika.
However, Parliament last week authorised government to borrow K36 billion from the World Bank for use in the floods emergency recovery programme.
Chilima said the assessment was undertaken with support from the World Bank, the European Union (EU) and the United Nations (UN).
In his statement during the bill’s second reading, Minister of Finance, Economic Planning and Development Goodall Gondwe said there are resources such as maize that need to be bought immediately, making it imperative for the House to pass the bill with urgency.
Speaking at the function, WVM deputy national director Fordson Kafweku said the workshop has been organised to reflect and look back at how World Vision has done its business in relation to the response operations because the organisation is a learning institution and as such, the lessons learnt workshop is in line with that aspect.
Speaking in an interview, director for Department of Disaster Management Affairs (Dodma) James Chiusiwa said there is need to look back and reflect on all kinds of responses undertaken and the department will bring together all the organisations that responded to the floods to assess their response.
The three-day workshop has brought together traditional authoritiers (T/As), district commissioners (DCs), beneficiaries, church leaders, Dodma, among others.
One million people from 15 of the country’s 28 districts were affected by the floods that displaced 230 000 people, killing 106 with 172 people reported missing.
According to a transport sector post-disaster needs assessment report released in March this year, the transport sector was also heavily affected as a total of 1 220.53 kilometres of road network suffered, 185 bridges were affected with 121 being totally destroyed and 64 partially damaged.
A total of 465 culverts were also affected during the floods and 312 completely washed away and 153 partially damaged.
