City Hall has launched a feeding programme targeting over 127,500 vulnerable households across Nairobi’s informal settlements.
The programme is aimed at cushioning them against the negative impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Nairobi Deputy Governor Ann Kananu on Monday revealed that the targetted populations are People Living with Disabilities, the elderly and those living with chronic diseases and HIV.
“Due to the high number of positive cases we have in Nairobi, our county has been placed under lockdown exposing vulnerable families to serious food insecurity challenges. The combinations of all the above factors have contributed to a lot of hardship to the vulnerable population of our county,” she said.
The programme ran by The Nairobi County Disaster Management started over the weekend with food distributed in areas within Kibra, South B and Roysambu.
The distribution to the identified beneficiaries will be done weekly over the next three months across all the 17 subcounties.
The foodstuffs include sugar, rice, loaves of bread and long-life milk, maize and wheat flour as well as other items such as blankets, sanitary pads and basins.
“We have, however, picked about 127,00 households most desperately in need of food assistance for the next three months between April and June 2021,” Kananu said.
Nairobi County Chief Officer for Disaster Management Mohamed Sahal revealed that the department will be going go door to door together with MCAs to donate the foodstuffs to avoid the spread of Covid-19.
The county government conducted a three weeks mapping exercise of the most vulnerable in the society, a number of households mostly affected and carried out a need assessment for vulnerable individuals.
The exercise was headed by a technical team within the disaster management department.
In South B ward families from Mariguini, Kisi village, Fuata Nyayo, Hazina and Masai benefited from the donation.
“The priority was given to People living with disabilities who are having a hard time dealing with the economic situation that has affected their daily livelihood,” said Waithera Chege, South B MCA.
At the same time, Kananu who is also Acting Governor attended her first virtual Council of Governors extra-ordinary meeting on the Covid-19 pandemic.
The meeting saw the 47 governors discuss setting up a framework for prompt release of funds to county governments in order to facilitate the provision of efficient services to wananchi.
This is, in addition, to the release of Sh10 million Covid-19 personal protective equipment (PPEs), surgical masks and sanitisers to counties to help in the fight against Covid-19.
While addressing the meeting, DG Kananu noted that despite the Covid-19 pandemic being a health issue, it has become a major economic issue negatively affecting various sectors of the economy including transport, housing, trade, tourism and entertainment sectors.
“The impact of Covid-19 on mwananchi will be long term thus requiring an urgent strategic approach to manage going forward. The pandemic has led to massive loss of jobs and income, lack of employment opportunities and increasing poverty levels which have in effect aggravated food security issues to low-income urban households with Nairobi County being the most affected,” she said.
