Gideon Moi calls for more supplies of food to Baringo

Baringo Senator Gideon Moi has called on the government to scale up supply of relief food to starving people in Baringo amid calls to suspend voter registration in the worst affected areas in the region.

Gideon who was speaking in Kabarnet, Baringo County when he donated over 600 bags of maize and other assorted foodstuff to be given to given to worst affected areas in the six sub-counties said the situation was dire.

"The situation is desperate. Images of images of our mothers with children scooping water from shallow dug-outs; the frail old men and women looking helpless from the pangs of hunger and dying livestock are horrendous to the human conscience and calls for all of us to come out and help save lives," he said.

He added that the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission should either consider suspending or extending the ongoing voter registration in the worst affected parts of the county.

"At the moment, residents are pre-occupied with survival and may not fully participate in the exercise because they have no time to think about taking voters cards," he said.

Gideon said the donation which included maize, beans, rice and cooking oil from his family and the former President Daniel Arap Moi will be distributed to people in the worst-affected areas in the county through the Food Committees under the County Commissioner's office.

"Please ensure that it reaches the deserving people because nobody should die because of hunger. It will be very bad," he said.

He said the 5,000 bags of assorted foodstuff already supplied by the National government to five sub-counties were not enough and more need to be supplied. The national government supplied the relief food to Tiaty, Baringo Central, Baringo South, Mogotio and Baringo North leaving Eldama Ravine.

He said all leaders in the county must come together and spearhead humanitarian efforts to save lives of those affected by hunger.

"As leaders we need to come together this moment and help our people. It does not matter what party we are in. what is important is save the lives of our people," Gideon said.

The Senator called on the County Government to lead the way instead of leaving the burden to national government.

"What the national government is doing is commendable. However, we are not seeing the County Government's hand yet these are our people," said Gideon.

Governor Ben Cheboi despite being in his office located a few metres from County Commissioner's office where the food were flagged off did not attend the function. His Deputy Mathew Tuitoek who was present was however taken to task by the County Commissioner Peter Okwanyo and MCAs present on what the county has done.

Despite the assembly setting aside millions of money for emergencies which fall under the Executive's docket, Tuitoek said they were still reviewing the budget as a county to see where to get money to allocate for the hunger-stricken residents.

"We are still looking at our budget to find what allocation we can get to channel to the affected," he said.

Gideon at the same time called on the government to embark on livestock off-take programme immediately in the county to curb further losses by livestock farmers.

"So far we have lost over 2,000 livestock to the drought and the government should buy the livestock from farmers to avert further losses," he said.