Over sh700m food project launched in Oyam district

Mar 16, 2010

THE Uganda and Germany Red Cross societies have launched a sh686m food security as well as water and sanitation project to support over 10,000 vulnerable people in Oyam district.

By Chris Ocowun

THE Uganda and Germany Red Cross societies have launched a sh686m food security as well as water and sanitation project to support over 10,000 vulnerable people in Oyam district.

The beneficiaries are returnees who fled during the LRA insurgency. Under the food security component, the Red Cross distributed tool kits and maize, beans and cow-pea seeds.

Vegetables like egg-plants, okra, dodo and sukuma-wiki as well as 7,000 household items were distributed in the sub-counties of Ngai, Iceme, Minakulu and Otwal.

Each household also received two hoes, a panga, an axe and a sickle. “We deal with the vulnerable people who have resettled in their villages. We are focusing on the women and not men because a man may be having more than one wife,” an official of the Red Cross said.

At Ngai sub-county headquarters where the project was launched, 893 households received the seeds and farm tools handed over by the national vice-chairman of the society, Robert Ssebunya, on Friday.

He told residents that the Red Cross had been mounting a number of campaigns to raise funds to reduce the problem of water and food shortage in northern Uganda.

Ssebunya urged the population to take advantage of the rains and plant the improved seeds that were donated to them. He warned them against drinking dirty water as they would contract water- borne diseases.

Ssebunya said the Uganda Red Cross had also constructed a branch office in Oyam district because of the growing number of members who are more than 20,000 now.

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