PS and Opposition differ on drought mitigation steps

ODM secretary General Agnes Zani(right) and ODM Youth League Chairman John Ketora addressing the press at Orange house,they have called IEBC to put in place mechanism to ensure that the youth who are in secondary and tertiary learning institutions are not denied their rights to register and vote.18/1/17-BEVERLYNE MUSILI

The Jubilee administration has failed to come up with policies that can rescue the country from drought and famine.

Drought has become a perennial crisis because of poor planning by successive administrations and Jubilee has not done any better to end the problem.

I do not understand why our people should go through this every now and then, 50 years after independence. It is a sign of failure by the Government.

There are countries that are in the desert but have learnt how to manage their resources very well.

By now, we should have come up with policies to rescue such a situation by controlling stocks or selling them off before they die. Our farmers are incurring great losses that should have been prevented by government of the day. Jubilee failed to put some preventive measure to avert the loss of lives and animals.

Assuming the Opposition was in power, we would have communicated with the affected communities to find out means of balancing and distributing food in advance.

It is sad that farmers in certain parts of the country cannot find market for their farm produce while on the other hand some areas lack what to eat.

Our people are annually swept away by floods during long rains. What stops the government from coming up with storage infrastructure? These are some of the issues a serious administration must address.

There is also need to encourage communities in areas normally affected by famine to engage in agriculture by providing incentives to them, which include farm inputs.

Drought is a huge problem and the Government must put in more efforts to rescue the country.

At the moment, the Government needs to allocate more money to help the affected communities get food and water.

—Dr Agnes Zani, ODM Secretary General