Long-term structural assistance needed for flood victims

While humanitarian workers agree that floods in Nyanza Province, on the shores of Lake Victoria in western Kenya, have "drastically reduced" since last week, serious long-term concerns remain.

Nyanza Deputy Provincial Commissioner Njoroge Ndirangu said on Tuesday that while very satisfactory government interventions were sustaining displaced people with food hand-outs, serious concerns remained for the future. "Our biggest concern is what is going to happen... No-one is hungry yet, but people's crops have been damaged, they have lost all their property and livestock," he said. "Here there is only one growing season. And we have now lost that, which will cause problems. We need more support in terms of food and farming inputs."

Nyando District Commissioner Paul Olendo stressed that while food items from the government - maize, beans and oil - could sustain people for a couple of months, it was "dehumanising" to keep giving people hand-outs of free food. "We need assistance so that people can go back to plant when the rains subside," he said. "We urgently need seeds."

He said people in the region were accustomed to heavy rains and floods as they always arrived at this time of year. "Yet when the rains come, they always find us surprised. We need to find a permanent solution to this problem."

He added that even when the rains subsided, flood water would continue to flow down from the surrounding hills, and that it was essential to identify solutions to this problem. "Home is home to these people, they're not going to move away."

"How long can we go on for like this? Everyone is saying it's the right moment to get this issue discussed," a local aid worker commented.

A regional analyst told IRIN that because Nyanza Province was traditionally considered to be an opposition stronghold, very little money had been invested in infrastructure, such as dykes or dams, which could prevent the annual floods and ensuing emergencies. However, since the ruling party, the Kenya African National Union, had merged with the National Democratic Party, formerly in opposition, there were now great hopes that this situation might change.

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated that 48,000 people had been affected by the floods in Nyanza Province - 35,000 in Migori, 20,000 in Kisumu and 6,500 elsewhere in the province. The floods were the worst to hit the country since 1998, when the El Nino phenomenon struck the area, OCHA said.