By Brenda Nkosi

Beneficiaries of the lean period cash transfers in Thyolo being briefed by Council officials

Thyolo, February 16, Mana: Thyolo District Council has disbursed K362, 850, 000 to 4,838 households from 14 Traditional Authorities (TAs) in the district in a bid to help households that have been heavily affected by hunger.

Speaking at Goliyati Primary School Hall during the supervision of the disbursement exercise on Wednesday, District Commissioner for Thyolo, Rosemary Nawasha said the Council has issued out cash amounting to K75,000 per household to carter for the months of January, February and March, 2023.

The initiative is meant to cushion those declared food insecure, during the lean period, by the Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee (MVAC) assessment.

“This money is meant to empower the people so that they can buy food supplies for their households,” she said.

In December, the households received a 50 kilogramme bag of maize.

Nawasha said people of Thyolo are vulnerable to hunger because they have little land for farming.

“The hunger situation was terrible as very few people have land to farm. If government, through the Department of Disaster Management Affairs (DoDMA), had not come with this assistance, our people would have been stranded,” she said.

A 75-year-old beneficiary from Mulevita Village, TA Kamoto, Estelle Moses, thanked government for the assistance.

“We do not know what could have happened to our families if government had not intervened. It could have been a terrible situation to handle by ourselves,” she said.

She said it is not easy for an old woman like her to find piece work as mostly employers look for energetic people.

In Thyolo, 34260 households are expected to receive the food assistance from December 2022 to March 2023 in form of a 50 kilogramme bag of maize for the first month and cash amounting to K25, 000 per month for a period of three months.

Of the 34260, 16000 who were already on social cash transfer have been enrolled under the program and 29,422 will be targeted under the scalable mechanism while 4,838 are targeted by DoDMA.

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