The Tribune (Blantyre)
Singayazi Kaminjolo
26 December 2008
Blantyre — Analysts and starving people have started condemning international organisations for bestowing upon President Bingu wa Mutharika with awards in recognition of his personal support and determination to end hunger.
The criticisms are coming when people have started to die of hunger at the time the international media calls Malawi the land of plenty where a government-sponsored fertiliser subsidy programme is alleged to have spurred the achievement of food security.
While Mutharika is boasting of how he has turned their nation into a land of plenty, hunger has already started killing Malawians. According to the Weekend Nation Newspaper, the food shortage at household level in Mchenga Village, in Balaka grew to unbearable levels for 78-year-old George Eriko, who collapsed along the Balaka-Liwonde Road on December 6 due to hunger and was found dead the following day.
According to close relatives, Eriko had gone without food for several days; and Village Headwoman Mchenga believes Eriko died of hunger.
Convinced by the relatives that Eriko did not have food for many days and that he fell ill in September, Balaka Police did not take his body for postmortem.
"The relatives told us not to bother about postmortem because they said he spent many days without food and that he fell ill from September and he became thin," said Lexa Chalera, Officer-In-Charge of Balaka Police Station.
Added Chalera: "There was no need for postmortem because, according to the relatives, he died of natural causes."
Eriko's niece told the paper that it was impossible to give him food every day because in her family she is also struggling to get some.
Member of Parliament for Balaka West where Eriko belonged, Ronald Chanthunya, told the paper that Eriko's death from hunger is a serious signal of how acute the problem of hunger is in his area.
Chanthunya said he reported about the food shortage in Parliament but his message was not considered.
He said more deaths from hunger should be expected in the area because mangoes, which most people depended on, are no longer available.
Meanwhile, Balaka District Commissioner James Manyetera told the same paper that about 21,000 farming families in the district lack food and that his office could not do anything about the problem.
Commenting on the issue Institute for Policy Interaction (IPI) said it is good for a country to have bumper harvest and for the president to win global achievements but it "all comes to nothing when the poor are going hungry."
"Playing bumper harvest it's all good. Playing the food basket of the Southern African Development Committee (SADC) it's all good, but when there is no mechanism to make sure the poor people have food then food security achievement awards are hollow," IPI executive director Rafik Hagat told the Tribune.
Public Affairs Committee (PAC) described the food shortage as an embarrassment not only to the State House but the country as well taking into consideration the country is hailed world wide as food secure and has since called on government to come into the open.
"If there is no food in government selling points it means there is no maize," PAC's Imran Shareef said adding: "The objective of food security is for the poor people to have food, minus that everything is meaningless."
Shareef called on government to come in the open and tell the world about the food situation.
Though in the past government officials used to state that all the silos in Malawi are full of grain, for the first time authorities have started to admit that some silos are not stocking any grain. The grain silos in Mangochi have for instance remained without stocks since President Bingu wa Mutharika launched them last year.
Chief Executive Officer for National Food Reserve Agency (NFRA), Edward Sawerengera told the local media recently that the 20,000 metric tonne - Mangochi silos were not being used to date because they did not have dispensing equipment for chemically treated maize.
"Currently there is no maize being kept at Mangochi. We just have about 300 metric tonnes there and this is simply testing stock," he said.
But Sawerengera explained MPs that the Kanengo silos in Malawi capital Lilongwe currently have in stock about 85,000 metric tonnes of maize and this was already more than the required minimum stock of 60,000 metric tonnes.
Meanwhile private traders continue to sell the grain at exorbitant prices despite government efforts to regulate the buying and selling maize prices. Consumers in most parts of Malawi are buying a 50 kg bag of maize at K4000 instead of the government recommended prices.
As over 21,000 families are starving in Balaka district and other areas, the picture which the international community has on the food situation in Malawi is different. Across the boundaries of Malawi, if the awards, which Mutharika are anything to go by, Malawi is a star performer in agriculture and does not need food aid.
Mutharika last month became the 16th recipient of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Agricola Medal bestowed on leaders who undertake measures to eradicate hunger.
Bestowing the award on Mutharika, Director General of FAO, Jacques Diouf said the Agricola medal was the highest distinction of the organisation to recognise personal support and determination to promote agriculture.
Diouf said because of Mutharika, Malawi had emerged as a true success story in Africa even in view of spectacular challenges of rising food and energy crisis.
Paying a deaf ear to reports of hunger, Mutharika told the FAO boss at the award ceremony in Lilongwe that his country has enough food to feed its citizens. "The articles you read in local papers and the internet that Malawi is facing impending hunger are false, malicious and cheap propaganda," Mutharika said.
Many analysts believe that while the implementation of fertiliser subsidy programme paid dividends in form of bumper yields, Malawi goofed by selling its surplus maize to neighbours last year.
Malawi, which harvested consecutive surplus harvest of 3.4 million tons in 2007, which was 1.3 million more than the national requirement, goofed by selling 400,000 metric tonnes to Zimbabwe and donated 10 000 tons to Lesotho and Swaziland.
"I think we are reaping the bitter fruits of the blunder of selling maize to Zimbabwe and that bitter fruit is the current shortage of maize in some districts. The bad news is that people are dying of hunger-related causes when government is shouting loudly that it has maize, which people are failing to access," opposition MP Gerald Mponda once said.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 The Tribune. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
