By Pearson Mbendera.
Harare, Zimbabwe. (News Of The South) – The previous years have seen the country having shortage of rainfall that has seen the country failing to adequately provide enough food for the nation. But this rain season, things have changed, the good Lord blessed us with rain, maybe with too much rain that has left may struggling as a result. But the recent floods have just showed how desperate the nation is in need for economic recovery that would help fix a lot of problems.
With the economy already failing to provide for basic needs the country needs, the floods have just compounded on the many problems we face. The country’s road network that has been ridden by potholes and needing serious capital to repair has been damaged some more by the heavy rains, making it even harder to access the areas affected by the floods, leaving many marooned, alone and scared for their lives.
With the way the nation struggled with those displaced in the Tokwe Mkosi, surely this newly found national disaster will just be another great crisis for the nation, one we will fail to fully address, as if we don’t have too much on our plate already.
But its not just the government’s inability to provide relief funding for those affected, surely the Meteorological Services Department in Zimbabwe needs money to acquire tools and personnel with expertise to forecast and foresee the coming of these disasters so that preventive measures would be taken before lives have been disrupted or ended because of the floods.
We have had to rely on South African broadcast of the cyclone which hardly covered the Zimbabwean area thus any messages of warnings passed to the Zimbabweans failed to fully identify the areas that would be affected by the flood, and thus, their vagueness undermined the impending threat of the cyclone, results of which have been devastating and will likely continue, putting the lives of many at risk.
But the need to preserve the lives of the nation should be at the top of the agenda, and money will go a long way to ensuring the safety of people in the future, thus, the high need to fix the economy that has been left unattended for so long.
A lot of times we ask the wrong questions when it comes to our politicians and their governance, but with elections scheduled for next year, we must change the conversation and not just stick to how well the country can react to the many problems we face after the effects but how well we can be proactive and take a more positive stance towards ensuring the safety and better livelihoods of the citizens of this great nation that have suffered for so long from both man made and natural disasters such as the floods we are facing right now.
The government is not to blame for the floods, they are not God who is responsible for the rain, but the preparedness of the nation and having the funds to deal with these emergencies solely rests on the government’s shoulders.
With these heavy rains already destroyed homes and other infrastructures in affected areas, they have also destroyed farmland and all the produce that had been planted including livestock, meaning that there is a chance that we may have shortage of food once again, or at least some areas will have that problem requiring more aid from the government. With a government heavily laden like ours, where will they find the funding to end these problems?
Having poured a lot of attention to the agriculture sector as a means to resuscitate this dying economy with the Command Agriculture program, the floods, among other issues have put a dent on the probability of success of the highly publicised economic program. While the program had its own shortcomings, the floods have added to the program’s risk. But while this may give them an excuse should it fail, having no control over rainfall, the issue of the Meteorology service in Zimbabwe in providing useful weather forecasts to aid in coming up with these decisions should be brought to attention.
Its time the economic situation gets addressed fully, once and for all, as evidenced by the many problems we are facing, it is spilling over in many areas. We are not just experiencing a problem of flooding from the rains, but from the many problems we are facing stemming from the economic and political crisis the nation is facing. If the floods are not a sign that the economy needs fixing, I don’t know what is.
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