Severe hunger hits Chama – Yotam Mtayachalo

By NATION REPORTER

SEVERE hunger has hit Chama District with hundreds of villagers camped at the Chama Boma waiting for relief food from the Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit (DMMU) which has so far been  erratic, Yotam Mtayachalo has revealed.

And Mr Mtayachalo says he and other MPs in Easter Province are disappointed with the manner in which government has been responding to the hunger crisis and the plight of the people of Chama.

Mr Mtayachalo, the Patriotic Front (PF) Chama North Member of Parliament has appealed to government to urgently deliver relief food to Chama because people in the area are in acute shortage of food.

He said while the DMMU had attempted to deliver relief food to Chama, the food was far from being enough and that people were being forced to share a 20 liter tin of maize between a family of eight.

Mr Mtayachalo stated that he and his Chama South counterpart Davison Mung’andu had sounded an alarm about the hunger situation in Chama but that government had arrogantly not listened to their plight.

He explained that he and his Chama South counterpart had alerted Parliament about the looming hunger situation but that government had paid little attention.

He said the human-animal conflict in the area has exacerbated the hunger situation and has pleaded with government to resolve the matter by cropping the animals particularly the elephants which had become such a menace in destroying crop fields.

He said people with money to buy maize from the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) were also failing to have access to the maize because government was only selling up to 600 bags of maize which was far from being enough.

Mr Mtayachalo has appealed to government to consider increasing the number of community sales from 600 to about a thousand so that as many people could be able to buy instead of sharing in small tins.