Public works programme to combat poverty extended

The European Union (EU) has helped the Malawian government launch a US $27 million public works programme to alleviate poverty and improve food security in the drought-affected country. "The Income Generating Public Works Programme, essentially an extension of a four-year initiative which ended last year, will be implemented in 15 of the 28 districts in all the three regions in Malawi," said Peter Phiri, the project manager of the programme. The programme has four components - road construction and rehabilitation, forestry, irrigation and fish pond construction - providing rural residents with short-term employment to improve sustainable food security. "The employment created by the road rehabilitation ensures an immediate injection of cash, while the village-based road maintenance system ensures a long-term injection of cash into the rural community, but this of course depends on the availability of funds. Villagers can earn about 90 US cents a day in this programme," Phiri explained. Villages also receive a supply of plants, are assisted to establish and manage nurseries, and given training in forest management, "while planting trees provides short-term cash benefits but, in a few years' time, long-term benefits of wood supply", he added. The irrigation component aims to eliminate food deficits and generate additional income from its first year of operation. Under this programme, groups of small-scale farmers can club together to purchase a treadle pump. Members of the club are then given training, tools and seed to cultivate a small plot, providing food to each of their families during the dry season. An estimated five million Malawians are in need of food aid after four consecutive years of drought, mainly in the south of the country. Despite Lake Malawi - one of the largest in Africa - the country's subsistence farmers have traditionally relied almost exclusively on rain-fed maize production. In the past four years, 4,964 treadle pumps have been issued, more than 2,000 farmers have been taught to construct channels from streams to divert water to their plots and about 99 km of diversion channels have been constructed. Around 33,600 households have also benefited from small-scale irrigation projects. The EU project has also helped provide 32,877 people with temporary employment, rehabilitate more than 2,000 km of rural roads and construct 69 bridges. With a per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of around $205, more than 50 percent of Malawi's 12 million population lives below the poverty line. About 85 percent of the population is located in rural areas and depends almost entirely on subsistence agriculture, with an average income of less than $100 per household per year.