John Muyamba

RUNDU - The Kavango East Regional Council (KERC) says it is unable to deliver drought relief food to beneficiaries as per schedule due to transport challenges.
Two military trucks are the only means available for use as per instruction by the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM), but due to the vastness of the region, these trucks are deemed inadequate.
“These two trucks are to cater for six constituencies, so it becomes extremely difficult. People are expecting that they get food monthly but because of having only two trucks, this is impossible,” said the Kavango East Regional Council’s Director for Planning and Development Services Ambrossius Makongwa.
Makongwa is acting Chief Regional Officer (CRO) at the moment
The distribution ratio is one bag of maize meal (12.5 kg), one bottle of cooking oil (750 ml), and four cans of  tinned  fish (400g) per identified food-insecure household. 
Due to the delay in sorting out transport logistics, the program only started to distribute from May 6. To date, only 2 325 beneficiaries got their food which is less of what the monthly distribution is supposed to be, which is 6 975 beneficiary homes in the entire region. Due to transport, the distribution schedule is affected and some have not yet received to date.
According to Makongwa, the distribution is being affected by a lack of personnel to work on the team as well as transport that is limited to only two trucks. 
“There’s also a lack of people who can load and offload the food; the OPM only provided 10 NDF soldiers who need to load the two trucks, five for each truck at the base warehouse where the food is being stored and offloaded in the communities where the food is destined. Due to distance and bad roads, especially in the remote hinterlands, these soldiers can only do a trip a day,” Makongwa added.
“Imagine these ones are the ones loading and they go with the trucks to go and offload every day. The OPM is saying there is no money to increase the number due to lack of funds to pay S&T and so on, and they can also not increase the trucks due to the same reason,” he added.
“At the moment, the CRO is trying to look at our votes to see whether we are having some money somewhere, if we have some emergency funds that we can maybe use to avail our two trucks then we can bring it to council meeting to see if it can be endorsed. If endorsed, we can use it for diesel to bring on board our two trucks and maybe the smaller vehicles from the constituency level can benefit from the amount to assist the situation. The next council meeting is probably the last week of July if all the councillors will be available,” he said.