The Namibia Red Cross Society and the City of Windhoek have launched a flood management and support pilot project in Windhoek.
The project is aimed at supporting communities affected by floods, especially people living in informal settlements, with health, hygiene, food security, and their livelihoods.
The pilot project started last month in the Goreangab and Havana informal settlement areas of the Samora Machel constituency.
About twenty households in the areas will benefit from the project with sandbags being provided to prevent rainwater from entering houses and barriers being built at riverbeds to direct water away from houses.
The Icelandic Red Cross Society provided funding of N$143 000 for the project.
Samora Machel constituency regional councilor, Nestor Kalola, says the first phase of the project consisted of several activities aimed at assessing the community’s vulnerability and capacity to cope with and recover from floods. He notes that the community’s participation is needed to identify priority actions and target groups.
Namibia Red Cross Society national board chairperson Rosa Persendt says the project is designed to improve the community’s understanding and awareness of the natural and social components of floods and aims at strengthening people’s preparedness to deal with these events.
She says the final objective is to bring about changes in communities’ behaviour to reduce the vulnerability of residents and their homes.
She also says floods are major causes of the loss of life and property, but death is caused more often through water-borne diseases than by drowning, with poor environmental conditions aggravated by floods causing suffering, disease, and death.
