Dodma faces K88bn relief food deficit
Department of Disaster Management Affairs (Dodma) says it has an K88 billion shortfall to cater for the 5.7 million people facing hunger in the 2024/25 lean season.
Dodma Commissioner Charles Kalemba, speaking in Nkhata Bay on the sidelines of an orientation meeting with area disaster risk management committees (ADRMCs), said the agency has mobilised K190 billion which is enough for up to December this year, but indicated that they are pushing to reach the targeted K278 billion.
He said partners such as foreign governments as well as local and international non-governmental organisations and agencies, the corporate world, the clergy and individuals of goodwill have provided assistance.
Said Kalemba: “We follow the Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee [Mvac] report. So, funds’ mobilisation is set between October 2023 and March 2024. From October, we are starting to reach out to councils that have a six-month food deficit.”
He also urged government to decentralise the process of updating the Unified Beneficiary Registry (UBR) if challenges rocking the identification of beneficiaries for the Lean Season Response are to be rectified.
He said the UBR, which is controlled by the central government, can be updated by district data entry clerks who have already been employed, but are not doing their work.
UBR Unit data management assistant Chimwemwe Saidi confirmed that some councils have outdated database systems because the UBR takes a census approach in gathering and updating its data.
But he said arrangements are in progress to employ a new real time data management system which he called Dynamic Updates.
In its August/September 2024 outlook, Famine Early Warning Systems Network (Fews net) observed that the Malawi humanitarian food assistance programme, targeting households impacted by the 2024 El Niño-induced drought was yet to start despite Fews Net and Mvac analyses classifying all Southern Region districts as in crisis from May 2024 through March 2025.
