The Department of Disaster Management Affairs has planned to establish four more warehouses in strategic places of the country for stockpiling and prepositioning relief items.
Currently, the department has three warehouses (the main one in Ntcheu, and one minor warehouse each in Blantyre and Lilongwe) for stockpiling relief items meant for assisting people affected by various disasters in the country.
Speaking on Friday, 5th November 2021, when he held a meeting with Nsanje District Council and visited some disaster recovery and resilience implementation sites, Commisioner for Disaster Management Affairs Charles Kalemba said the department, in collaboration with councils, will use available structures and open up warehouses in Mzuzu, Mangochi, Bangula and either Karonga or Chitipa.
“The warehouse in Bangula will cater for Chikwawa and Nsanje Districts. For your information, we have planned to start stockpiling relief items in this [Bangula] warehouse from next week.
“As we are focusing on disaster risk reduction and resilience interventions, let us also scale up response interventions. We want to speed up the process of providing relief assistance to the affected people. We do not want to be moving longer distances to collect relief items for distribution to people in dire need when we can store some items nearby, in case of any disaster,” said Kalemba.
