Mozambique’s relief agency, the National Disasters Management Institute (INGC) has spent only 30 million meticais (slightly less than a million US dollars) out of the 120 million meticais allocated to the contingency plan for dealing with possible disasters during this year’s rainy seasoAlthough floods did occur on several of the main rivers, they were nowhere near as serious as had been feared, and so three quarters of the money allocated was not spent.Speaking on Thursday, at the end of a meeting of the INGC Coordinating Council, the INGC’s general director, Joao Ribeiro, said the money was mostly spent on monitoring, pre-positioning of resources for dealing with disasters, search and rescue operations and humanitarian assistance.Drawing up a balance sheet on the rainy season, Ribeiro said that in the initial months (October to December) 18,500 people had been affected by storms and floods. He said that only two deaths could be attributed to the floods. 120 classrooms and three health units were damaged by flooding.“In general, the intervention of the emergency operational centres was assessed as positive, and involved government institutions and cooperation partners”, he said. Local authorities and risk management committees had responded promptly, and took preventive measures so that the situation caused by the heavy rains would not worsen.There was significant flooding in the Zambezi Valley, but Ribeiro said only 119 households had to be resettled and supported. This is an indication of the success of the resettlement programmes that followed the Zambezi floods of 2007 and 2008. Most of the tens of thousand of people resettled then have staying in their new homes on the high ground, and have not tried to move back to flood-prone areas.In the second phase of the rainy season (January-March) there were also floods on the Limpopo and Incomati rivers in the south. These were the most serious floods since 2000, and affected 23,632 households. Ribeiro put the death toll from this phase at three.
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