By Emmanuel Chilemba:
President Lazarus Chakwera has ordered local councils to ensure fairness when distributing maize under the Lean Season Food Insecurity Response Programme.
He said reports that some prospective beneficiaries were left out of the initiative were disheartening.
Speaking at Nkuzi Primary School in Chikwawa District Thursday, Chakwera said the Unified Beneficiary Registry (UBR) was put in place to rectify such practices.
“It’s not fair for the whole district to be left out while beneficiaries in other districts are accessing the same [food] without challenges.
“This is why the Ministry of Agriculture revised its strategies in the identification of prospective beneficiaries of some of its programmes. This intervention is aimed at ensuring that no village is left out of such initiatives,” Chakwera said in an apparent direct response to Traditional Authority Maseya, who demanded a review of the UBR.
The traditional leader claimed that the council’s UBR was strewn with irregularities.
Speaking when the President commissioned a Malawi Rural Electrification Programme (Marep) site, Maseya alleged that some villages had been excluded from the programme while other households had more than five individuals listed as beneficiaries.
“There is hunger in villages as many households did not harvest enough due to El- Nino-related shocks.
“To make matters worse, a lot of households have been left out of the maize distribution exercise. It is very sad to note that a whole village has been left out of a programme while, in some areas, a household got more than five individuals listed as beneficiaries,” Maseya said.
The development comes as 85,441 households are set to benefit from this year’s programme in the district.
The issue of hunger and fairness in food distribution exercises also stirred debate during the current meeting of Parliament.
One of the lawmakers, namely Machinga North East’s Ajilu Kalitendere, said in his area, food items were at one time received on behalf of an elderly woman who had been dead for two years.
“We are concerned with the way this food distribution [exercise] is being handled. The people who are supposed to receive these items are not benefitting. Even though we hear that the government has sent food to an area, we still find that those who were most affected by the disasters are not on the list,” Kalitendere said.
Another lawmaker, Machinga Likwenu Constituency’s Bright Msaka, reported in Parliament that people in his area were facing severe hunger, such that they were resorting to eating buffalo beans, locally known as chitedze.
In response, Agriculture Minister Sam Kawale told the legislators that the government was working on modalities to distribute food to families affected by hunger in 23 districts across the country.
He added that identifying beneficiaries was the responsibility of local leaders.
“All we are trying to do is to make food available in all areas. Of course, we haven’t reached all the intended beneficiaries yet, but we are making efforts to send food to all affected areas. It is the duty of community leaders to identify those who truly deserve to benefit [from the initiative],” Kawale said.
Malawi is facing the problem of food insecurity in 2024, with the situation projected to worsen during the lean season from October 2024 to March 2025.
Around 4.2 million people, or 20 percent of the population, are expected to experience acute food insecurity.