Flooding hits south

Over 500 farmers in Malawi lost their crops this week when the Shire river burst its banks and flooded almost 200 hectares of maize fields, African Eye News Service reported. Malawi commissioner for disaster preparedness, Lucious Chikuni, said on Thursday: “We need at least 5,000 mt of maize seed for farmers to replant their crops. We need to move as quickly as possible to prevent hunger in the future, but haven’t yet received our budget from government and are therefore hamstrung.” No one was reported killed in the flooding, but scores of houses, bridges and other infrastructure were destroyed, he added. At least 570 subsistence farmers were affected in the disaster in Malawi’s southern Chikwawa district on the country’s border with Mozambique.