By Hanning Mbabazi
Kitgum: Trouble engulfed residents of Kitgum District where over 300,000 families are facing Starvation in 10 Sub-counties due to poor and inconsistent rains.
Spy Uganda has learnt that many residents in Sub-counties of Labongo and Layamo don’t have enough food to push them upto December.
Farmers and parents with Children with a Nodding disease are calling on the District Disaster Management team and aid agencies to make contingency plans and Avery possible starvation by end of this year.
Of recent, the Office of the Prime Minister was initially providing each member of a nodding affected household with four kilograms of maize flour, two kilograms of beans while the nodding victim receives an accompaniment of highly nutritious supplementary foods and medication each month.
However, the affected families in the villages of Okidi and Tumangu in Labongo, Akwang, Labongo and Layamo Sub Counties say they have not received the monthly consignment for the past three months.
Richard Ociti the village chairperson of Bongo-Laku ward in Tumangu village, Labongo Akwang Sub County said, families with affected children are starving and in a dire need of food and other forms of support.
The Kitgum district nodding syndrome coordinator Michael Okech said that the provision of food relief and supplementary foods had caused swift improvement on nodding victims and the halt in food supplies causes more seizures.
Nighty Oyella a parent in Okidi village says the halt in the monthly food distribution has greatly affected them and wants government to instead support them with livelihoods that will supplement the delayed food relief supply.
She argues that providing the affected families with heifers, oxen, ox-ploughs and seed inputs will enhance their livelihoods and also improve food security in households.
Kitgum LCV Chairperson Jackson Omona said that the district ensures that affected families benefit from programs like Cattle restocking program, Operation Wealth Creation, Northern Uganda Social Action Fund (NUSAF), Discretionary Development Equalization Grant (DDEG), Uganda Women Entrepreneurship Program (UWEP) amidst other government programs.
