In his Christmas remarks, the senior Pastor of Miracle Centre Cathedral, Pastor Robert Kayanja said that on Saturday (December 24) he flagged off tons of food to Karamoja which arrived today (December 25) morning. 

"We want to celebrate our Christmas with the people of Karamoja and that's why we flagged off this food. Our team in Karamoja is expected to give out the food and also slaughter animals for these people," Kayanja said. 

Kayanja revealed that the food he flagged off was part of that which was planted in Karamoja at the time when they were faced with hunger. 

Kayanja said he flagged off the food because he had recently revived the Karamoja cry initiative.

 
“We are reviving the Karamoja cry bucket initiative because we discovered a new village of 500 families with malnourished children. These families need our urgent attention,” Kayanja said, adding that this week, the church will flag off two trailers of food consignment to Karamoja.

“Majority of us eat food and leave it on the plates, but there is a soul out there that is starving to death. With your small contribution, you can feed a family for some time,” Kayanja said.

He noted that when Karamoja was faced with famine last year, the church and well-wishers ran to their rescue and delivered food, Elijah’s meal, soda, clothing, mattresses and blankets among others.

Last year, Kayanja Ministries was among the few organisations that ran to the rescue of the people of Karamoja. 

In his first flagging food consignment, Kayanja flagged off 20 tons of relief food to Karamoja with each household receiving 50kgs of fortified food.

“By the time we arrived in Karamoja, the people were waiting for us there. Some of the children had never tasted a soda and most of them had never seen people sharing Christmas with them, but when they saw us, they were totally happy and began dancing,” Kayanja said, adding that the wheat that they grew in Karamoja was harvested and it is the staple food for the Karamojongs.

Last year, the government earmarked sh135b to avert the hunger crisis in the Karamoja sub-region and also flagged various metric tonnes of relief food to cater for the starved Karamonjong people.

The report by the Integrated Food Security Classification (IPC) that was released last year indicated that a total of 518,000 people in the Karamoja region were experiencing acute hunger.

The report indicated that 41% of the region's 1.2 million people, 91,600 children under the age of five were acutely malnourished and are in dire need of treatment. 

Malnutrition according to the findings had also spilt over to adults with an average of 9,500 pregnant and lactating mothers requiring treatment for the same.