HUMAN LIVES MUST BE SAVED “AT ALL COST” - MACAMO

The chairperson of Mozambique’s parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, Veronica Macamo, declared on Wednesday that, in the event of natural disasters such as floods, human lives must be preserved “at all cost”.She was speaking to reporters in the central town of Caia, on the south bank of the Zambezi, after she had been briefed on this year’s floods in the Zambezi Valley.“I am pleased to find that this year nobody has died because of flooding in Zambezia and Sofala provinces”, Macamo said. She thought it evident that preventive work, urging people to leave flood-prone areas, and the rescue of those few people who had been surrounded by flood waters, had worked. Macamo said she was encouraged by the high level of awareness shown by people living along the Zambezi of the flood risks during the rainy season. They had been able to combine farming on fertile soils near the river with care for their own safety.The director of the country’s relief agency, the National Disasters Management Institute (INGC), Joao Ribeiro, said that the experience of previous years, and the government’s policy of resettling people at risk on higher ground, meant that most inhabitants of the valley were living in safe areas, and only returned to the river banks to farm, and after the river had subsided.The major Zambezi floods in 2007 and 2008 led to large scale resettlement, and it seems that most of those resettled have stayed in their new villages, rather than trying to live permanently again on the valley floor.Ribeiro said that, with the formation of local risk management committees, in settlements across the Zambezi basin, people now had greater knowledge of the risks, which had helped in voluntary resettlement.Nonetheless, Ribeiro said that are still around 20,200 people living in what are regarded as risky areas in districts along the Zambezi. Of immediate concern is the situation in Chinde district, in Zambezia province, at the mouth of the Zambezi, where the river is still rising.Although the Cahora Bassa dam cut its discharges on Wednesday, the earlier flood surge from the dam is still arriving at Chinde. Ribeiro said that over 5,000 people are at risk in the district.Two fibre glass boats, with 300 litres of fuel, and a rescue force consisting of four sailors and ten Red Cross volunteers, are on standby, if any evacuation proves necessary in Chinde. Further upstream, in Mopeia district, the local administrator, Simao Manuel, warns that any further rise in the Zambezi, or in one of its tributaries, the Cuacua, will put at risk 19 primary schools in low lying areas.In Mopeia too, a rescue force and two boats are on standby. This force has already evacuated 158 people, who found themselves surrounded by water in the Cocorico locality.