According to Radio Mozambique, 300 million meticais (10 million US dollars) is needed to pay for seeds, fertilizers, tractors, pumps, ploughs and maintenance work to the irrigation scheme.
The Chairman of the Chokwe Irrigation Scheme (Hidraulica Agricola de Chokwe – HICEP), Soares Xerinda, told Radio Mozambique that the government has already disbursed 20 million meticais.
Xerinda explained that, although rehabilitation work to the scheme has guaranteed the supply of water to half of the eight thousand hectares available in before the floods, food production in the region is still below the desired level.
Xerinda stated that despite the calamity earlier in the year, and with little finance, the Chokwe farmers will over the next fortnight deliver to market potatoes, beans, cabbages, cucumbers and onions. These were grown in an area of five hundred hectares after the floods receded.
Covering 34,000 hectares, the region of Chokwe was once the breadbasket of the nation.
Gaza province was one of the regions worst hit by this year’s floods which left over 160,000 people homeless.
Post published in: Africa News