Karonga Diocese of the Catholic Church through the Catholic Development Commission in Malawi (Cadecom) has rolled out a cash transfer programme to support 607 food-insecure households in Karonga District.

In an interview on Friday, Karonga Diocese monitoring and evaluation officer Deodatus Muliya said the initiative is in response to an assessment report Karonga District Council released which estimated that at least 30 000 people are food-insecure due to prolonged dry spells in the 2022 farming season.

He said: “The diocese is just responding to the assessment report to cushion food-insecure households during the lean period.

A beneficiary (L) gets her money from Mukuru Money agents

“Cadecom is giving a one-off support to 4 520 households across Malawi with 607 households from Karonga. Each beneficiary will get K100 000 to buy food.”

Muliya asked the beneficiaries to use the money for its intended purpose.

One of the beneficiaries, Ketrina Nakalambo, from Ngemera Village commended the diocese for the intervention, saying the drought affected food availability in the area.

“The dry spell of the 2022/23 growing season affected us a lot. I found it difficult to feed my family. It has been six months of struggle to provide for my children. I pledge that I will use the money to buy food,” she said.

Another beneficiary, John Njerenje also urged fellow beneficiaries to utilise the money for food.

He said: “It will be unfair to the donors if people will not use the money to buy food.

“The objective is to enable food-insecure households concentrate on productive activities instead of spending time searching for piecework to buy food.”

Cadecom is implementing the exercise in traditional authorities Kyungu, Mwirang’ombe and Wasambo with K62 million aid from the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund through the Episcopal Conference of Malawi

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