Zim to distribute 71 000 metric tons to 2.7 million food insecure citizens

The Zimbabwe government will soon start distributing over 71 000 metric tons of maize worth over ZWL43 billion to about 2.7 million people who are food insecure across the country, a Cabinet Minister has said.

The government set aside the maize to alleviate hunger during the food insecure period between January and March.

Public Service and Social Welfare Minister July Moyo told the media on Friday that the Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee led by the Food and Nutrition Council in the Office of the President and Cabinet done last year showed that the country has food insecure households constituting 2.7 percent of the population.

This year, fifty six of the sixty districts in the country will benefit from the program, with the government leading the process, while the remaining four districts including Buhera, Chivi, Mangwe and Mwenezi will be catered for by development partners such as the World Food Programme and its cooperating partners.

Moyo said the distribution process would be the same across the country, with the structure already captured in the Drought Mitigation Systems where, at national level, the sub-committee of environment and disaster risk management chaired by the Minister of Local Government is in charge.

At provincial level, the Ministers of State and their provincial secretaries will be responsible for the planning at that level, whilst District Development Coordinators (DDCs) chair the distribution sub-committees at district level.

“Now, it is cascaded to the ward level where as you know, the ward level is chaired by a chief or a headman. Those officers of government work with the chiefs and headmen in order to make sure that no one and no place is left behind,” said Moyo.

He said the over 290 chiefs in the country, over 500 headmen and over 35 000 village heads are also mainstreamed to make sure that everyone who is supposed to benefit is assisted to access the food handouts.

Moyo said village heads know which households within their jurisdictions were food insecure, adding that the food is meant for every food insecure households regardless of their political persuasions.

“Headmen and chiefs look after every Zimbabwean, because every Zimbabwean who is hungry has to get food. Yes we will have accusations of the food being distributed along partisan political lines, but we try to eliminate those accusations by making sure that there is a lot of training for the distribution officers,” he said.

He said the training has already cascaded to the grassroots with university graduates having already been roped in to lead the exercise.

Moyo said 2022/23 was a good year in terms of crop production in the country and the Government was not importing food for distribution to the vulnerable, but was taking from its reserves.

New Ziana