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President Professor Peter Mutharika has described the 2014/2015 farming season as one of the worst the country has ever experienced.
Mutharika said this on Monday, during the National Address statement on food security at Kamuzu Palace in Lilongwe.
He said that there have always been people facing hunger in recent years, but the situation this year is the worst compared to the other years,” said President Mutharika.
The President said that during this growing season, the rains started very late (in mid- December 2014) and from the onset rains in mid-December, 2014, through to mid-January, 2015, the country received continuous heavy rainfall that led to the worst flooding in living memory.
Mutharika said the floods affected about 1.1 million people and it damaged people’s property and public infrastructure and at least 64, 000 hectares of crop fields throughout the country, mostly in the Southern Region.
“106 people were killed and 172 people were reported missing and the magnitude of the floods caused my Government to swiftly move in and, as you will recall, I declared a state of national disaster in the 15 most affected districts and I appealed for assistance on 13th January, 2015,” said Mutharika.
He said, “the response to my appeal for assistance was commendable. Let me take advantage of this opportunity to thank all the development partners and the entire humanitarian community for the assistance to the flood-affected households that they rendered, and continue to do so.”
Mutharika said soon after the floods in January, 2015, the season was characterised by intermittent rainfall and prolonged dry spells in most parts of the country.
He said the combination of the delayed onset of rains, the worst floods, the intermittent rainfall and the prolonged dry spells at critical stages of maize development, led to a food deficit of 223,723 metric, for the first time since the introduction of the Farm Input Subsidy Programme.
