The National Institute for Disaster Risk Management and Reduction (INGD) needs around 39.7 million meticals to respond to natural disasters, such as storms and tropical depressions, in Inhambane province, southern Mozambique. As reported by the newspaper Noticias, this amount is part of the contingency plan approved by the Emergency Operational Committee (COE) last Friday (25).
The Secretary of State in Inhambane province, Amosse Macamo, and the provincial governor, Eduardo Mussanhane, emphasised that the contingency plan should function not only as an instrument for assessing needs, but also as an approach to ensure the sustainability of the interventions carried out in recent times of calamity.
Eduardo Mussanhane emphasised that the number of people to be affected in each of the three scenarios envisaged should not equal or exceed that of previous years. ‘The interventions carried out in the road sector significantly reduce the impact of bad weather on the movement of people and goods.
The Mapinhane-Mabote road has benefited from major engineering works that will improve circulation during the rainy season, because there are already improvements on this road,’ said the governor.
For his part, Amosse Macamo called for the province’s accumulated experience in dealing with natural disasters to be used to draw up an effective contingency plan, pointing out that vulnerability has been decreasing every year in Inhambane.
The data for the 2024-25 contingency plan, released on Friday, includes three risk scenarios. The first estimates that 148,000 people could be affected by strong winds, droughts and floods. In the second scenario, which includes floods and cyclones, the number rises to 200,000 people. The third scenario, which combines the second with the possibility of earthquakes, could affect up to 201,000 people.
The technical analysis considers the second scenario to be the most likely, although the extreme is not ruled out, given the region’s vulnerability to droughts, cyclones and floods.
According to the INGD provincial delegate, Gilberto Miguel, the plan was drawn up based on climate forecasts and an analysis of the previous rainy season, including vulnerability factors and the province’s response capacity.
The report also points out that the La Niña phenomenon could influence the main river basins during the 2024-25 season, which increases the risk of adverse climatic events.
