WFP’s E29m rollout for 530 homesteads

MANZINI – The World Food Programme (WFP) will roll out around E29 million to emaSwati as relief from the effects of the COVID19 pandemic.

This is courtesy of the WFP’s crisis response, which responds to seasonally induced and COVID-19 food insecurity.

The exact figure is E29 680 000 and will be distributed to 530 homesteads.

In total, the programme aims to target 53 000 people and each head will be given E140. The disbursement exercise will be done for four months until December. This was revealed by WFP Head of Programme Diason Ngirazi. The financial assistance is rolled out by the WFP through the support of the ECO, a European Union Humanitarian Organisation and Germany.

The financial relief has come at the right time, where the informal traders, particularly emaSwati, were grappling with the effects of feeding their families following the lack of businesses from the curfews imposed by government in the past few months.

Registering

Currently, the WFP is engaged on an exercise of registering potential beneficiaries of the programme in constituencies. Kwaluseni and Siphofaneni are the most recent areas to have community members registered for the programme.

Ngirazi said the organisation targeted impoverished populations who had limitations in financing, lost jobs due to COVID-19, the elderly and people living with disabilities. The head of programme stated that they were working with non-governmental organisations who worked at community level with relief committees, and traditional leaders to identify those who were vulnerable.

Last year, the WFP in collaboration with World Vision and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), rolled out a similar project, where financial assistance in the form of recovery packages intended for informal traders to innovate and re-establish their enterprises within the Mbabane-Manzini corridor. Each informal business trader received a sum of E3 000 for business recapitalisation during a three-month response period.