5 200 households get drought relief

AT LEAST 5 200 households in Mhondoro-Ngezi are benefiting from Government’s drought relief programme after being affected by the mid-summer dry spell earlier this year, an official has revealed.

The drought relief programme, which was extended last month to the end of this month (May), was targeting households in communal and resettlement areas.

Mhondoro-Ngezi district administrator Mrs Fortunate Muzulu yesterday applauded Government for extending the programme in the area.

“As a district, we received erratic rains during the 2017-2018 farming season,” she said.

“We then failed to meet our expected harvest target, which led to the increase in the number of households in need of food aid.

“We are, however, very happy that Government assisted us through the food relief programme, which is ending today (May 31).

“The programme assisted both communal and resettlement areas, benefiting 5 249 household who shared 262,45 tonnes of maize.”

According to Mrs Muzulu, in terms of subsistence farming in the district, 10 wards are communal, while six are commercial.

Government has indicated that it has enough grain in reserve to cater for thousands of households that may require food assistance countrywide.

Zimbabwe recorded a bumper harvest during the 2016/ 2017 agricultural season after almost a decade of poor yields during to re-current droughts.

Government also introduced the Command Agriculture programme, which also helped in improving yields in agricultural activities.