By Our reporter
Karonga, November 22, 2015: Some local Non-Governmental Organizations in Karonga has embarked on a weather pattern sensitization campaign for 2015 to 2016 rain season in order to reduce hunger situation that the district is expected to experience especially if the alternative measures are not followed.
This follows the results of the weather forecast for the 2015 to 2016 of the district’s rain season filed by the metrological department which shows that the area will experienced insignificant rains in a short period that will affect the harvests.
Speaking after the two days Participatory Scenario Planning (PSP) workshop in the district organized by the Self Help Africa, the Disaster Risk Management and Crops Officer under Discover Project for the organization Blessings Mlowoka said the main alternative solution for this year rain season is to construct water conversation areas.
“We decide to hold this workshop with different stakeholders as one way of planning and finding alternative solutions to this year rain season, first of all what you have to know is that the weather forecasts for this rain season indicate that the district will have insignificant rains that will end up in the short period of time,” said Mlowoka.
“Therefore, we have come up with number of solutions where one of it is to urge the community to start constructing water conservations in their areas that will help to store water for sometimes which they will use to irrigate their crops when the rain stops since it will rain for the shot period, in such, we shall not have hunger next year. On top of that farmers should also plant early maturity crops as well as drought tolerant,” disclosed Mlowoka.
Mlowoka further said, “We shall therefore start sensitizing the community on these measures in all five traditional leaders so that we can have more harvest next year.”
In his remarks, Julius Ng’oma from the Civil Society in the department of Climate Change from Lilongwe urged the community as well as NGOs to combine local and scientific knowledge when dealing with climate change issues claiming it is very important.
Meanwhile Karonga which is one of the districts in the country that were affected by dry spell last year is yet to receive rainfall despite other district such as Mzimba and Chitipa in the same region received the rain early this month
