No one will die of hunger.......

Government has assured councils in the country that it will make sure that all beneficiaries under the Lean Season Food Response Programme are reached out to as planned in the response plan.

Speaking on Thursday (20th February, 2025) in Monkey-Bay Mangochi during one of his monitoring visits under the lean season response activity, Commissioner for Disaster Management Affairs, Charles Kalemba said he was impressed with progress of the exercise as the department and Mangochi council continues to transport maize to the affected communities through vessels owned by the department of Fisheries.

Kalemba said all hard to reach areas in the districts of Mangochi, Rumphi and Nkhata Bay are being given the necessary attention so that the response program is undertaken as planned.

"I am so impressed with the progress and I have been assured that the Ndunduma vessel will ferry all 700 tonnes it requires to transport to Makanjira," he said.

Ndunduma vessel transports 500 bags per trip and has so far ferried 5000 bags.

Monkey-Bay Principal Fisheries Officer, Salim M'balaka said the vessel takes about four hours from Monkey Bay to Makanjira and normally leaves around 1 O'clock in the morning.

He said Ndunduma vessel is one of the reliable ships the department has and was so hopeful that it will carry out the exercise as planned and allocated.

According to the Malawi Vulnerability Assessment (MVAC) Committee report, Makanjira has about 13 thousand affected people and have all been targeted to benefit under the lean season response programme.

The Department of Disaster Management Affairs (DoDMA) and various Disaster Risk Management (DRM) stakeholders on Wednesday and Thursday (9th and 10th October 2019) converged on Salima for a working session aimed at finalising the review of the National Disaster Risk Management Communication Strategy (NDRMCS).

Speaking during the opening ceremony, DoDMA’s Chief Mitigation Officer Dr. Stern Kita said the review was aimed at incorporating emerging climate and disaster risk management issues into the strategy, while also reviewing the progress that has been made since the strategy was developed in 2014.

“In 2014, we developed the National Disaster Risk Management Communication Strategy whose implementation period came to an end in 2018. It was high time we reviewed the communication strategy to incorporate emerging climate change and disaster risk management issues,” said Kita.

The working session has brought together civic educators, civil society organisations, climate and weather experts, planners, communication experts, humanitarian partners, police, road traffic, water resources and geological survey experts, among others.

In previous working sessions leading to the finalisation of the NDRMCS, DoDMA engaged communities from eight district of the country namely; Zomba, Mulanje, Mwanza, Kasungu, Nkhata Bay, Nkhotakota as part of the processes in the review of the communication strategy. The department also held a review meeting with various DRM stakeholders, engaged various stakeholders in development and trial-testing of developed and improved messages.

The review of the NDRMCS has been made possible with funding under the Saving Lives and Protecting Agriculture-based Livelihoods in Malawi: Scaling up the use of Modernised Climate Information and Early Warning Systems (M-CLIMES) Project.

The M-CLIMES is a 6-year, US$16,264,545 (about K12 billion) project funded by the Green Climate Fund, the Malawi Government and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). It aims at supporting the Malawi Government to take steps in saving lives and enhance livelihoods at risk of climate-related disasters.