The Mozambican authorities announced this Thursday, 26 October, in the city of Beira, the start of the reconstruction of 15,000 houses in the central region of the country, destined for the victims of Cyclone Idai, which occurred in March 2019.
According to the executive director of the Post-Cyclone Reconstruction Office, “this is a project that was already part of the reconstruction programmes for new homes for the 15,000 vulnerable families affected by the cyclones in Sofala. It will be financed by the World Bank, to the value of 42 million dollars, with the aim of building 15,000 homes destroyed by Idai, and the selection of the same number of families has begun in the districts of Dondo, Búzi and Nhamatanda and Beira,” explained Luís Paulo Mandlate.
He emphasised that, “in the first phase, the beneficiary families were surveyed and selected according to criteria of climate vulnerability, namely greater exposure to natural disasters, levels of poverty and destruction of homes and access to basic infrastructure, among thousands of homes hit by Cyclone Idai more than four years ago”.
The project was presented this Thursday in the city of Beira, capital of Sofala province, in the centre of Mozambique, and was the result of a two-month door-to-door survey carried out by 555 surveyors hired and trained by the National Statistics Institute (INE), which identified the existence of more than 15,000 families in need of urgent assistance in rehabilitating their infrastructure.
Luís Paulo Mandlate also said that, in addition to the housing component that will be covered by World Bank funding, his office has another 58 million dollars for the restoration and construction of 43 ruined public buildings in Beira, Dondo, Búzi, Dondo and Nhamatanda, four destroyed markets in Búzi, Dondo and Nhamatanda and a jetty bridge in Búzi.
He also added that Mozambique’s post-cyclone reconstruction needs are in the region of 3.2 billion dollars, with only 1.6 billion dollars available.
Mozambique is considered one of the countries most severely affected by climate change in the world, facing cyclical floods and tropical cyclones during the rainy season, which runs from October to April.
The 2018-19 rainy season was one of the most severe on record in the country, in which 714 people died, including 648 victims of cyclones Idai and Kenneth, two of the biggest ever to hit the country.
