More than 3000 residents from Kilifi County in Magarini constituency are now at risk of being strike by hunger as most of their crops were swept away by floods that was experienced in the area in the last couples of weeks.
According to the residents their lives have been turned to be beggars having nothing left in their farms to support them.Samson Randu one of the affected resident narrated that in the last four years they have been farming season in season out but the harvest were too little and scanty to feed their families.
“I am the bread winner of my family of more than 6 children, we have been depending on farming since the last four years, but due to the floods that swept our farms in the last few weeks we have been struggling to make two ends meet,” he said.
The status of the residents reflect how their lives have been to miserable in the last one month, young children of below 5 years in risk of getting Kwashiorkor due to lack of balance and sufficient diet, school going children are forced to drop out of school to join parents in finding something to eat even for a single meal.
Gladys Nyale who is a wife and a mother said that her farm was few meters from the banks of river Galana, and she had been farming for the last five years with different crops some being drought resistance crops.
“This area normally receives inadequate rainfall, I decided to plant different types of crop which some do well even during dry season like cassavas, I was very disappointed when floods caught us unaware, the efforts that I had put in my farms all was no more,” she said.
The residents could not even count on the exactly loss each encountered most of them thinking of all the investment they had put in that is all gone.
However the residents added that despite their lives being at risk of facing hunger, they called upon the county and national governments to release the disaster funds that were set aside to assist floods victims in the country.
Meanwhile area MCA Renson Kambi with other area leaders and well-wisher intervened and rescued the situation by distributing 12tones of Unga which is equivalent to 5000 bandles which according to him it will only sustain the residents for 2 to 3 days.
“The situation is pathetic, looking at the faces of the residents you could surely tell that hunger is ‘eating’ our people, we call upon other well-wishers wherever they are to come in and add more food to our people,” he stated.
Each of the residents walked away with 2kgs of Unga as most of them had camped at the areas chief camp after they had some food could be distributed to them.