Following the last floods that hit the central region of Mozambique in the first quarter of 2007, Morrumbala was home for over 20.000 people who had been displaced from the localities of Inhangoma and Chare, district of Mutarara, province of Tete, and sheltered in eight accommodation centres in the locality of Pinda, in the administrative post of Megaza.
According to Morrumbala's permanent secretary José Rajabo, most of the people have just decided to follow the steps of Fitolo, a traditional leader, who decided to abandon the area due to the lack of any visible progress in the construction of adequate housing.
Mozambican Health Minister Ivo Garrido recently led a delegation of the Ministers Cabinet to visit the districts of Mopeia, Morrumbala, and Nicoadala and Quelimane, the capital of Zambezia, to learn on the ground what incentives could be offered to the local population to prevent them from returning to the flood prone areas.
Garrido found that after four months since the beginning of the resettlement process nothing serious is happening on the ground.
The government is to discuss in the next few days the resettlement process in the four provinces hit by the recent flooding in the central region of Mozambique, namely in the provinces of Zambezia, Sofala, Tete and Manica.
A team of Noticias's reporters witnessed in the districts of Mopeia and Morrumbala recently that there is still a lot of work to be done to restore the normal life of the local populations, because most of them are still living in makeshift houses, made out of grass.
Thus, Garrido said that it is imperative to speed up the process of reconstruction to encourage the return of those who have decided to once again establish themselves in the low lying flood prone areas.
"There are no houses on the ground", deplored the minister, stressing that this issue, if not taken seriously, the pos-floods reconstruction could be derailed with the incoming farming season that could drag thousands of people to the low lying areas who, despite being the most productive in terms of agricultural production, are flood sensitive.
State Administration Minister Lucas Chomera said in Maputo on Wednesday that all should be done to ensure a faster construction of houses for resettled people to make sure that fewer people are exposed to new disasters in the oncoming rainy season.
He was addressing a meeting of technicians for assessment of resettlement and reconstruction post-floods, and said that the approaching of the rainy season calls for doubled efforts to speed up the process of building houses for the resettled peopled.
The return of the people to the lower lying regions along the Zambezi River is one of the most dreaded scenarios of the Mozambican government which is doing its best to break the same cycle "floods-rescue-resettlement-floods" year after year.
SOURCE: AIM
