By John Longwe
CHIKWAWA-(MaraviPost)-Scores of hunger stricken people from 2,500 families in Chikwawa district have on Sunday made a sigh of relief after the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) Member of Parliament for Chikwawa Nkombezi, Abida Sidik Mia reached out to them with relief food in form of maize.
The female MP distributed the maize in the two areas of Group Village Headman (GVH) Chizenga and GVH Nyangu in the constituency.
Speaking before the distribution, Abida Mia said, she had directly brought the food to the people in response to the prevalent acute hunger, which has reached serious levels in the district and particularly in Chikwawa Nkombezi Constituency, with traceable increased cases of malnutrition among adults and children alike.
The lawmaker who is also wife to MCP Vice President, Muhammad Sidik Mia said, the urgent needy situation at hand has prompted her to embark on food distribution excercise and that, she is outsourcing the food through her own personal resources and also from well wishers.
“I will continue sourcing food by through my personal means as well as through well wishers, so that togther, we can reach out to as many people as possible,” explained Mia.
With a motherly tone, the legislator expressed her deep concern over the hunger situation upon learning that some of the affected people had reached a desperate extent of surviving on pumpkin leaves and diluted fizzy drinks commonly known as “super dip”.
A woman from Nyangu Village, the 59 year old Esnart Nsona, apparently weakened by hunger, told this reporter that she had spent over 7 days eating pumpkin leaves in order to survive.
The woman also narrated how her 4 grandchildren have developed hunger related ailments including severe malnutrition because of the grueling hunger.
However, while verbally communicating about her intention to reach out to as many affected families as possible, Abida Mia appealed to government to respond to the situation with the urgency it requires.
In recently days, Mia has already reached out to over 4,000 hunger affected families in a few parts of the constituency.
Government through the Department of Disaster Management Affairs (DODMA) is currently reaching to hunger affected people in different parts of the country and in many situations, beneficiaries have complained of either receiving inadquate food or that of poor quality.
The live example of both insufficient and poor quality food that was distributed was in Dowa district where scores of people from hunger affected families returned the food they had received from DODMA after they discovered the maize was both rotten and mixed with maize husks locally known as “madeya”.
