LUHONONO – Kabbe North councillor Bernard Sisamu has said due to floods and poor rainfall experienced this year, many people harvested little to nothing.

Although poor to late rainfall has been experienced in many parts of the country, Sisamu specifically touched on the poor harvest experienced in Kabbe North, as people could not cultivate, which led to a poor harvest. 

Many residents of Kabbe North and Kabbe South remain cut off and are unable to reach town for basic essential services and goods due to the seasonal floods as the Zambezi River rise.

Kabbe is frequently affected by flooding, as it is on low-lying land – only two to five metres above sea level. 

Heavy flooding inundated the region in early February after good rains in the surrounding catchment areas.

A quick drive on the Katima/Luhonono main road, one can see empty crop fields with no maize or mahangu stalks – a sign of poor harvest in Kabbe North. 

“The Office of the Prime Minister must try to declare drought relief countrywide. Although the whole Zambezi region is affected, I can’t say there is a village in my constituency that got a bumper harvest this year. My constituency has about 9 000 residents. All of them have been negatively affected. People will require urgent drought relief food,” he noted. 

In terms of food security, Sisamu said people used to cultivate on their own in the constituency, but what happened this year, none of them managed to harvest due to poor rainfall, which stopped in March. 

According to him, the rain stopped in March. 

“All those crops that were ready for harvest dried up and people got nothing. So really, the government should do something when it comes to disaster risk management. People will require food items, such as maize meal; otherwise, people are starving. There is a poor harvest due to poor rainfall,” Sisamu said. 

He said the situation has been aggravated by the seasonal floods, which submerged local farmers’ crop fields.

Luhonono area induna Thadius Matengu also confirmed the poor harvest among his people.

“The floods came too early, while the rain came late this year. Therefore, people could not cultivate – and those who did could not harvest anything due to poor rainfall. People need urgent food aid. The government should come to our rescue and provide drought relief food to these affected communities,” Matengu stressed. 

Kabbe South farmer Lawrence Shinkisha, whose crop field has been destroyed by floods, also fears the worst in terms of hunger. 

“Our crops are submerged. We don’t have food to eat. It is really difficult. Government must come to our aid,” he said.

However, in terms of grazing, the communities are not affected because the area is now greener due to flood water, which is subsiding in some streams.

In terms of relish, the people in both Kabbe largely depend on fishing, which they use for home consumption and sell the surplus at Katima Mulilo open market.

The Zambezi regional disaster risk management unit recently called on relevant actors to provide urgent humanitarian aid in the form of tents, food items, mattresses, life jackets, boat engines and fuel, snake repellents, mobile clinics, mosquito nets as well as disinfectants for toilets and pit latrines.

These were some of the urgent needs identified by the disaster risk management team with education and health officials, following an assessment of nine schools that have been negatively affected by floods in the Kabbe South and North constituencies. 

–       anakale@nepc.com.na