OKOLOTI – Deputy director of marginalised communities in the Ministry of Gender Equality, Poverty Eradication and Social Welfare, Rebekka Namwandi has encouraged members of marginalised communities to stay in one place to ensure that they receive their quarterly food allocations.
Namwandi said in an interview with Nampa yesterday that the nomadic nature of some of the members of the marginalised communities has made it difficult for the allocation of food parcels.
“That is their way of living, it is their character so we cannot do anything about it because that is their tradition. It [however] makes our job extremely difficult and costly because our regional planners travel for long distances to take food to them but they find a whole village vacant,” said Namwandi.
In response to the issue, Namwandi said the ministry has started looking for strategies to let regional councillors notify them through radio communication about the availability of food parcels.
“But I have learned that people neither listen to radios nor read newspapers because of the location they are in, so it is extremely difficult to alert them,” she said.
Namwandi said this after the regional councillor of Nehale Lyampingana constituency in Oshikoto region, Joseph Shilongo told Nampa they are struggling to distribute food to the marginalised communities because they are always moving from one place to another without notifying him.
He said once they hear that some of their fellow communities at a certain place have received food parcels, they all scramble all there, not knowing that they will also get it.
“When we come at their areas, we do not find them there because they are at other areas where they heard that people received food,” said Shilongo. – Nampa