Heavy rains cut off Inhambane

Heavy rains in southern Mozambique have virtually made the city of Inhambane inaccessible by road, Radio Mozambique reported at the weekend. Inhambane is about 360 km northeast of the capital, Maputo. The report said that torrential rains in the area had swollen local rivers and made the only road into Inhambane impassable. Mozambique has been hit by two consecutive years of flooding. The flooding at the beginning of this year affected more than 500,000 people. In its latest emergency report, the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) said that an emergency preparedness plan, produced jointly by UN agencies and the Mozambican government, was expected to be finalised by 18 December. WFP said that as part of its own contingency plans the agency had started pre-positioning 2,070 mt of food, the first of a planned 6,000 mt consignment. WFP said, however, that despite the arrivals of the commodities, its pipeline continued to be "precarious" and that shortages of pulses and sugar were "likely to occur". "The balance will therefore be pre-positioned when the pipeline improves," WFP noted. The food agency said that during November it delivered more than 2,000 mt of food to its implementing partners, adding that it was currently reaching about 70,000 people through its food-for-rehabilitation (FFR) programme. WFP said that a joint food needs assessment with the government's disaster management authority - the INGC - in Niassa and Nampula provinces in the north showed that there were 12,000 people in need of assistance in Niassa and about 30,000 along the coastal districts of Nampula. "Following this joint WFP/INGC assessment, general food distributions were continued in Matilda and Luabo (Chinde district) for 8,000 beneficiaries due to a high prevalence of malnutrition, while FFR activities continue in the rest of the district," said WFP. It added that it was monitoring the "possible effects" that abnormally high rainfall could have on the harvest prospects for 2002. "With a large proportion of the production areas currently flooded, it is estimated that only 30 percent of the planned areas will be planted," the agency warned. It also said that its operations were being "constrained" by a lack of access in some areas, because of the commencement of the rains.