Mozambique: Flood death toll stands at 270, says PM

The storms and floods that hit Mozambique earlier this year caused 270 deaths, Prime Minister Benvinda Levi announced on Wednesday. Addressing the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, Levi summarised the damage caused by the floods in the southern and central provinces. She said 21,000 houses had been destroyed or damaged, as well as 302 health units, 717 schools, and 53 water supply systems.

8,100 kilometres of roads were destroyed, and more than 440,000 hectares of crops had been inundated. Levi said that, to mitigate the impact of extreme climatic events, the government had decreed a Red Alert in January, which allowed “centralised coordination in immediate response to the disasters”, and the activation of National Emergency Operational Centres, as well as the local Disaster Risk Management Committees. The government’s rescue and humanitarian assistance actions, said the Prime Minister, “were complemented by a broad movement of internal solidarity” and aid from cooperation partners “which is making it possible to reduce the suffering of the people affected”.

Levi condemned all attempts to steal aid intended for flood victims. “We urge all of society to remain vigilant”, she said, “and to denounce these practices, so that those involved can be brought to justice”. She said that electricity had been restored in all flood affected districts in Gaza province, and that key roads had been reopened, allowing traffic to flow again along the country’s main north-south highway (EN1).

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Where classrooms had been damaged or destroyed in Maputo, Gaza and Sofala provinces, the government had supplied temporary tent-schools and kits for the pupils, so that educational activities could resume. Services had resumed, Levi said, in 205 of the 302 health units affected by the floods. Vaccination campaigns against cholera had covered 1.7 million people in Niassa, Cab Delgado, Zambezia and Sofala provinces. Levi said the government is now finalising a post-flood reconstruction plan “which seeks to ensure, in the medium term, the recovery of productive capacity, the definitive and resilient reconstruction of the destroyed economic and social infrastructures, and the restoration of the means of livelihood of the population”.

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