By Moses Nyirenda

Lilongwe, May 7, Mana: Office of President and Cabinet (OPC) Principal Secretary, Dr. Anjimile Mtila has urged people in the country to embrace the spirit of resilience if they are to move on amidst various natural catastrophes such as droughts and floods which the country experiences.

She made the remarks on Tuesday in Lilongwe during the opening ceremony of the three-day National Resilience Strategy Phase 1 Review Workshop organized by Department of Disaster Management Affairs (DODMA) and its partners including Care Malawi and United States Agency for International Development (USAID) among others.

Mtila said that people in the country are strong and there is need for them to exercise resilience to the shocks induced by natural disasters.

“Malawians are already resilient by birth, all of us survived childhood diseases and we are very strong and when disasters come we are able to face them,” Mtila said.

She also said that people in the country should stop relying on maize cultivation in order to maintain crop production resilience amidst natural calamities.

“We focus too much on maize and when there are problems such as drought then we have no food the whole year, but if we focus on other crops like cassava, sweet potatoes and sorghum then we would have food all year round.

In addition, when we grow maize the next six months after we harvest, land just stays idle as we do not grow anything else on the land until the next rains and with this we always have food in security  all year round,” she said.

Also speaking during the opening of the three-day workshop, DoDMA Director of Resilience and Recovery, Peter Chimangeni said that as DODMA they are striving to develop various strategies and interventions aimed at building resilience in the country.

“We have the 2063 agenda and so many other documents that highlight what can be done to bring the country to resilience, we are very positive that we are going to achieve what is needed on the issue of resilience.

But also the coming of  the new disaster law is also quite handy for us to make sure that we spearhead issues to do with resilience building and we are sure that we will make substantial progress by 2030,” Chimangeni said.  

Also speaking at the function, Care Malawi Chief of Party, Daniel Abbott said that his organizations is committed to working with government in implementing projects that would help to come up with resilient solutions to the problems caused by natural disasters.