By Eleuterio Fenita
MOZAMBIQUE. World Vision will open food distribution centres this week in five flood-stricken districts where most of the estimated 80,000 displaced people are now living.

The feeding centers are being established within a framework aimed at creating transit camps for displaced people which will ultimately lead to the setting up of resettlement areas.

About 30,000 people have been displaced in around town Caia alone.

Chief Sacuatacua speaks on behalf of hundreds of these families who are now living along a railway track built on higher ground. The crops of these families were ready for harvest, now they are submerged in flood waters.

"We need World Vision's help, we need your help", he told World Vision relief staff deployed to that part of Sofala Province.

"I have lost my school "Can you get me a new one? And a book and a pencil" one displaced child said shyly.

The centres will open this week in conjunction with the World Food Program in Caia and also in Chemba (Sofala Province), Tambara (Manica), Mutarara (Tete) and Morrumbala and Mopeia (Zambezia).

From these centers, relief food will be distributed along with 10, 000 survival kits, consisting of a plastic sheet, jerrycans, forks, spoons, pots, blankets and capulanas (cloth used by women).

World Vision has been active in all these districts with development programs, and the organisation's intervention has been widely expected by not only people part of these programs, but many others in the affected communities.

Local authorities, who have been working alongside United Nations agencies and Non Governmental Organizations such as World Vision have been actively involved in coordinating what some have described as being "a race against the clock" to prevent a repeat of last year's tragedy.

In April and May last year floods killed around 700 people and forced approximately 500,000 people to abandon their homes.