Harare, (New Ziana) – The Zimbabwe government expects to disburse ZWG190 million every month up to March next year towards the Urban Cash Transfer Program for citizens facing food shortages due to the drought that is gripping the country, a Cabinet Minister has said. The Zimbabwe Livelihoods Assessment Committee (ZimLAC) report released in April indicated that 1.7 million people in urban areas require food assistance, while in rural areas, the figure stands at 6 million.
This brings to 7.7 million representing 51 percent of the country’s population, the number of people requiring drought relief, in addition to 4.5 million children in need of school meals. Responding to media queries on a report on food deficit mitigation strategy and the urban cash transfer program presented to Cabinet on Tuesday, Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Minister July Moyo said the Treasury request follows the completion of the disaggregation of the figures.
“We have now done our disaggregation and the national target is 35 percent of people are vulnerable in the urban areas, but it will differ from one local authority area to another,” he said. He said the highest numbers of people that need assistance constitute 59 percent of a given population and the lowest stands at 18 percent. After arriving at these figures, Moyo said those in the wards have been asked to use community-based assessment to determine the number of people and households that are going to be targeted.
“We have given them parameters to say those disabled persons are a priority if they don’t have any livelihoods from other sources of revenue. Then we have child-headed families, the old age and these are our first priorities, but we have families that are out of work for a long time and they have no other means of sustenance, and we target them, and we are using community-based assessment programs,” he said.
The Urban Cash Transfer Program is an ongoing exercise which is to be heightened, hence the request for money from Treasury. Meanwhile, in the report to Cabinet, Moyo said there has been a significant improvement in the distribution of grain throughout the country from the previous weeks with 46 494.52 metric tonnes having been given to beneficiaries as of June 22.
The beneficiaries received three-month allocations with the grain distribution to the vulnerable and food insecure people by province since the beginning of the blitz last month. Manicaland received 6 894.64mt, Mashonaland Central 5 524.25mt, Mashonaland East 4 935.55mt, Mashonaland West 5 719.83mt and Masvingo 9 149.49mt. Other provinces include Matabeleland North which got 2 827.50mt; Matabeleland South, (4 542.27mt) and Midlands which received 6 926.81mt. Regarding the Zunde RaMambo/Isiphala Senkosi, a total 2 588.29mt had been collected to date across all the provinces.
New Ziana