Imtiaz Sooliman – Newsroom Gift Of The Givers on Malawi
AI: Summary ©
The devastating effects of severe weather in Mozambique, on the West, and on the South have caused devastating events. The disaster organization is sending aid to both regions and people are asking for help. The situation is dire and the country is bracing for hard times. The medical team is on standby for the damage in the central and north region and they are expecting more severe and dangerous events. The situation is becoming very critical and real, and they want to impose on the rest of the disaster area.
AI: Summary ©
Now severe weather patterns have caused havoc worldwide. At the
start of the 2050, new year, more than half of Malawi has been
declared a disaster zone. Following weeks of torrential
rains, we are seeing the same situation in Mozambique, with
1000s affected by heavy rainfall that has damaged schools, bridges
and lots of other infrastructure moving to the other parts of the
globe. Icy cold weather in Gaza has also led to many deaths.
Relief, disaster organization, gift to the givers, announced last
week that they will be sending aid to both Malawi and to Gaza. Now
joining us from our studio in Durban is gift to the givers.
Founder, Dr MTS, Suleiman, Dr intras, very good morning to you.
Thank you for joining us.
Morning. Even good to be with you again. Dr Suleman, before I go to
you to chat about both Malawi and Gaza, I want to go to your man on
the ground. He's Jafar, Jafar jakura, who is in Malawi. So I
just want to get a quick update from Jafar. Very good morning to
you. Jafar, you on the line.
Yes, I am. Good morning to you too, as well, and thanks for
calling. The situation is falling in many areas now. We've got
the main disaster area signed in and and
taking place, and a lot of people of over 120 1000 have been
displaced. Overall, the figure is over 200,000 they've got in the
southern tip of Malawi, a place called Mulan, a place called
palombe in mulanji district, the areas are completely submerging
water. Properties have been destroyed. The roads have been
converted into pools of Lake everywhere, and there is every
effort been made to see that, apart from our own organization,
gift and forgive us, we were also paying on board. In our case,
we've been supplying food items in in the kikwa district,
together with our Malawi Defense Force helicopters, we have reached
to places where people have been stranded and have not been able to
get any food supply. And also, we assisted and supported the Malawi
defense force by ensuring that people who are stranded or have
given some kind of shelter, and we moved into areas where people have
actually been sheltered, in places like community halls, schools,
churches, mosques and schools.
We've got a situation where
we need something like almost three ounce tents. And there is a
short supply of tents we had in Benghazi and and the manpower will
be supplied from our sales force to see that various pens are
erected, apart from just making every effort to see that we do
also erect a few tents. Plastic Sheets for damage. House repaired
is required for reinforcement.
Then, on the education side, 240, schools have either been submerged
by flood waters or used as temporary displacement sites.
Millions of dollars have been lost of education. Surprise, schools
being used as temporary shelter. Longer term, the schools need to
be relocated completely.
The school needs around 800
so there's quite a big demand arising from this catastrophic
disaster Jafar. Just tell us a new cyclone is expected to make
landfall, or was expected to make landfall in Malawi last night, are
we seeing more rain, and is the outlook looking just as bad for
the week ahead?
Yes, for the next week southern region, which has been very badly
affected up to now,
the rains have subsided here, but the central and northern regions
are likely to be hit, likely to be hit very hard with heavy downpour
of rains. The as far as the cyclone goes, there are two
theories. One is going to move away to Madagascar. The other one
is that that through the Congo, it may come beside as well. So people
are bracing for anything of every eventuality that that may take
place, but the likelihood is that we will be spared this the cyclone
hitting us, but the downpour of games is supposed to come in, cats
and dogs type. So central and northern region are now the areas
which are likely to be affected very badly already, out of 28
districts of Malawi, 15 districts have been affected, and five of
them are in the central region. So we are hoping that we don't have
too much of damage, but the indications are very strong that
we will have more destruction. The
passed away.
Is over 200 and 153 people only in chikwa district are missing. So
overall, the the country is bracing for some real hard times
for us, Jafar. Thank you very much for that update. As you can
understand from that update on the ground from Jafar jakuda, who is
in blanty and marae, the situation is dire. The outlook is not good.
I've got Dr imtia Suleiman with me, live from Durban. Hello again.
Dr Suleman,
a tough, tough time for the people of Malawi. I want to ask you about
your relief efforts there and then, if you can tell us if you
have any difficulty in dealing with the situation on the ground
right now, the
relief efforts is what gaffa has mentioned to you already. We in
Malawi for 10 years. Strangely enough, the office in Malawi was
opened by the brother of the present president. Peter mutarika
is a present president. His brother, Dr bingo. Mutarika opened
our office officially in 2004 and from that time, we've had
excellent relationships with the Malawi government, even with the
president before this Joyce Manda. And when we got to the areas in
the south, the Malawi Defense Force were very, very helpful. In
fact, we were really reliant on them. We must not forget, we will
give credit to the Malawi government and the defense force,
being a poor country, they've done an excellent job. They screen 4000
people from trapped areas very quickly. They don't have the best
of boats and the best best of helicopters, but they were
admirable. Their statistics, their figures, everything was up to
date. Total cooperation. So in terms of logistics and support,
it's been brilliant, of course. Except where the areas are
impossible, with broken bridges and broken roads. You can't do
much about that, but they use the helicopters to ferry the supplies
to trap people, and they even use their boats to ferry supplies to
trap people. We, from our side, in South Africa, had water rescue
teams on standby last night. The disaster management told us, look,
the water levels are subsiding in the south we don't need the water
rescue now. Most of the rescue is done, but we are, as Ghaffar
mentioned, expecting more rains in the central and north region. If
that becomes a problem and becomes very critical, then we'll call you
for the water water teams the other area that's on. We have to
be on standby after the day he's explained the damage. What is the
point now? We have to wait for the medical crisis. There may be
cholera and other water borne disease, which is a reality.
There's stagnant water, and there's a lot of mosquitoes.
Malaria, normally, is a big problem in Malawi. It's going to
be aggravated now by this millions of liters of stagnant water. So
that's what we want standby for, and we have a medical team on
standby for that purpose. Again, we won't move until we get the go
in from the Malawi disaster management, we do want to impose
ourselves on them. Have you had any response after your appeals
for assistance last week?
Yes, yes. Many people have already started. Many people have called.
Some people said, I've been to Malawi. It's very sad. Where can
I? Can I bring stuff for you? Other people said, when's the bank
details? Other people said, What can we drop off? Others? Other
said, we're making collections, and we'll get back to you. So
we've had an excellent response, you know, in from people calling
us generally the weekends. It's a bit slow in South Africa, but from
this morning, we will get many, many more people calling us and
responding to us, because we know people know the situation. The
media has covered it quite extensively, and people are aware
that it's a major disaster.
Let's move our attention to Gaza, where another humanitarian
situation is playing itself out icy, cold weather. It's a little
bit unheard of. Tell us about
the detail of what's going on in Gaza, and then what's the latest
from your team on the ground there?
Around the same time as the Malawi floods broke, I got a message from
Gaza, very sad message from office representative there, saying this
child has died from cold weather. And she mentioned three or four
children in different areas who died because of cold. Then she
mentioned a fisherman who went to sea to try to fish for his family,
and he died, succumb to the court also. And she said, look, as a
result of the war in Gaza in September, in July, you know that
war had destroyed many buildings. Of course, I had seen that for
myself with a team that had been there. And strangely enough,
before I left in September, I told them, your biggest problem is
going to be winter now, because there's no way you're going to get
building material in here. You can't build homes. People are
going to be stranded outside in tents, maybe in the open area.
When winter comes, you're going to have a major, major problem. They
said, What can we do? We don't have building material. It's
access to Egypt and Israel is very difficult, and the borders are
blocked. We don't get building material coming in, so we have to
just manage on the outside. Last year. When I say last year, I mean
december 2013
they had a flood situation there. And this time they had a cold
situation, and the coal was freezing, as you know, all over
the Middle East. And immediately they called. They said, Look, kids
have died. Other people have died. We released money, and we.
Said, Go and buy warm stuff and start covering the people that
they have. They live in open areas. It's tense, it's water all
around. There's no proper there's no gas, there's no fuel, there's
no heating. They have to chop firewood to make themselves warm.
So all you can do now is try to provide warm stuff, nothing else.
And you know, it's just stuck. That's all you can do. We've
already started disputing warm items. And we've asked them, if
they require anything else, they must please let us know
what are the main obstacles that your relief organization is facing
in dealing with the issues in Gaza right now?
Well, Gaza, the biggest problem is, if you cannot get the items
inside Gaza, it's a major nightmare trying to bring it from
the outside, either from the Egyptian side or from the Israeli
side, or even from the Jordanian side. Things don't move fast
enough. There's an emergency. Sometimes you can meet for five or
six months for items to come in. Unfortunately, they have a total
blockade on items coming to Gaza. So when you get stuff inside, like
when the war happened, we were very fortunate that they had some
supplies initially in the stores that we could buy medical
supplies, we could buy equipment for them. Now, again, we're
fortunate that they had some stock inside those, some of those
companies in Gaza, but if they don't have the stock, it's a major
problem. It takes a long time, several months before you can get
anything in, and by the time you get it in, for this case, we try
to get winter items in, it'll probably summer by the time.
How many months before, before things start to warm up a little
bit?
You look around, probably around end of February, you know, by end
of February, March, it starts getting warmer. But remember, the
weather patterns have been upside down. All over the world, nothing
follows a system anymore. In South Africa, in summer, it's cold. In
winter warm. The weather patterns have been messed up all over the
world, so there's no definite way you can say yes. Now the sun is
coming through. As the sun comes through, suddenly you have three
weeks of cold again. So it's very, very difficult, but normally, by
the end of February, beginning of March, things should start warming
up, to some extent in Gaza. Dr Suleman, thank you very much for
for talking to us this morning and give us a picture as to how things
are standing in Gaza, as you've just seen, but also in Malawi,
where massive, massive humanitarian aid operation is
underway, many people are still threatened, if not from direct
flooding, also from waterborne diseases and well, the threat of
of mosquitoes
that hangs over them in that part of the world. So get in contact
with gifted the givers if you want to make a contribution to the
relief effort in Malawi, Mozambique also, And in Gaza, But
You