Written by Frank Kamchacha
Dowa, March 4, 2016: The World Food Program (WFP) which, in partnership with a local Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), is distributing food and cash transfers to people registered under the Malawi Vulnerability and Assessment Committee (MVAC) in Dowa district has admitted facing challenges particularly in the first months of implementing the exercise.
WFP’s Monitoring and Evaluation officer, Ronald Kamwendo said this in an interview during the Dowa district MVAC response and supplementary feeding update.
Kamwendo said among the challenges, village heads were grabbing cash entitlements from the beneficiaries, improper use of the cash and unpredictability of rising cost of maize prices whereby vendors took advantage of the shortage of the grain in ADMARC markets to reap off buyers.
He said initially the WFP planned to distribute cash transfers worth K11, 800 per person adding the amount was enough buy a 50Kg bag of maize, vegetable oil and others but this suffered a setback following increased price of maize.
On supplementary feeding Kamwendo said there was commodity sharing in some health centres as well as poor storage facilities and lack of administration in administering the relief food.
He said MVAC assessed the economic activities, security and policies while WFP as its responsibility was mandated to distribute relief food to the 112,251 people affected by hunger in the district.
Kamwendo said the district was assessed to receive the humanitarian food support for three months from January to March while other districts such as Balaka, Blantyre rural and Chikhwawa, the distribution started three months earlier following prolonged dry spells from the 2014/15 agricultural season.