Principle Social Welfare Officer for Karonga, Tionge Mbale, says government has disbursed K1 billion to over 12,000 ultra-poor households facing food deficit in the district.
Speaking during a media orientation workshop organised by National Local Government Finance Committee (NLGFC) in the district on Monday, Mbale said the beneficiary households include 7,523 households under social cash transfer programme and 5,219 households under climate smart public works program.
He said the targeted households were affected by El Nino induced droughts that hit the district during the last growing season and negatively impacted on their agricultural productivity.
“As of 31 October, we had disbursed K75,000 to each beneficiary household through their mobile money wallets. The aim of the pay-outs is to help cushion the households from hunger after they failed to produce enough food due to drought during 2022/23 growing season,” Mbale said.
Scalable Mechanisms Coordinator for NLGFC, Mulder Mkutumula, said government, through social support for resilient livelihoods project (SSRLP), is scaling up social cash transfers to ultra-poor and vulnerable households faced with extreme weather related shocks.
“Currently we are implementing the scaled-up cash transfers in Karonga, Nkhotakota, Ntcheu, Chiradzulu, Blantyre and Thyolo. These districts were selected based on drought risk, systems readiness and other interventions happening in the districts. However, our aim is to reach out to all disaster prone districts,” Mkutumula said.
He said for the 2022/23 rainy season, 116,357 households were targeted in all the six districts.
SSRLP is a Government of Malawi project funded by the World Bank and Social Protection – Multi-donor Trust Fund (SP-MDTF) through NGLFC.
Reported by Yamikani Sabola
