Gov't supplies over 75,000 Tons of Food to Drought Affected Communities in Somali Region: PM Abiy

Addis Ababa February 22/2022 /ENA/  The government of Ethiopia has supplied over 75,000 tons of food items to the draught affected areas in the Somali Regional State, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said.
PM Abiy made the remark while responding to questions posed by members of the House of Peoples’ Representatives today.

During the occasion, the Prime Minister said that children's nutrition was also supplied to the affected region.

In a bid to alleviate the water shortage in the region, the government has supplied 259 trucks of clean water, he added.

According to him, humanitarian assistance in giving access to nutritious food, nutrients, and immunizations served as a short-term remedy that prevented people from dying.

Cattle have been severely harmed, Abiy said adding that the government of Ethiopia is working to curb the challenges of drought in the long term plans.

“Water conservation, market links, and broad cloud seeding are among the long-term alternatives,” he stated.  

Since the Somali Region and neighboring Borena zone have vast fertile land and human resources, if the government manages to bring water to this area, it is possible to curve the problem, the Premier stated.

Regarding the overall agricultural activities in the country, Abiy told the 3rd Extraordinary Session of the HPR that cluster farming is a productive and profitable method of mechanized farming that has to be widely adopted by Ethiopian farmers.

According to him, currently some 600 thousand hectares of land have been covered with wheat crop from which 25 million quintal of production is expected.