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Makokoba residents receive food aid in this file photo

Munyaradzi Musiiwa, Midlands Correspondent
GOVERNMENT has started distributing food aid to more than 200 000 households that are still in need of assistance in the country.

In an interview Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Deputy Minister, Engineer Tapiwanashe Matangaidze, said Government was distributing 11 000 tonnes of maize per month to support households.

Eng Matangaidze said the households in need of food aid had their crops destroyed by floods early this year while some of them live in areas that have perennially received low rainfall.

He said the Government was feeding the families from proceeds of the bumper harvest realised in the last cropping season.

“Government has started giving food to about 200 000 households that are still in need of food aid. We are giving them 11 000 tonnes of maize every month. It is important to note that the number of people in need of food aid in the country has dropped to close to a million from four million last year when the country grappled with an El Nino induced drought,” he said.

Eng Matangaidze said the significant drop in the number of people in need of food aid has been attributed to a bumper harvest in the 2016/17 cropping season that was necessitated by Command Agriculture and the Presidential Input Support Scheme that were complemented by above average rains.

This year the country produced in excess of two million tonnes of maize and the Grain Marketing Board (GMB) is still collecting grain from farmers.

Last year 4.1 million people were in need of food aid.

The previous year, southern Africa had grappled with an El Nino induced drought that resulted in widespread crop failures and poor harvests leaving about 40 million people in need of food aid in the region.