Navinkhula Community Welcomes Irrigation Farming
Gibson Ngwira
Members of the Navinkhula community have expressed joy over the opening of the irrigation site within their village by the Diocese of Karonga. This was expressed during the mobilization meeting conducted by Development Desk field officers in Navinkhula village last week.
The meeting was aimed at informing the communities around the irrigation scheme about the purpose of the scheme. The communities were informed that the scheme is for the Diocese of Karonga and members are there to benefit from this scheme by growing crops which would generate money for them and improve their ho
usehold economy hence improving their livelihoods. However they will be asked to pay something which will be agreed upon by their committee when put in place.
The communities were very happy because of this gesture by the Diocese and said that many people around the scheme will benefit from this for the winter cropping. They said that this has never happened to them and that all along they had been using water canes which had been a problem to them to produce enough for sell in order to improve their livelihoods.
One farmer said that it will be very profitable now to venture into winter cropping with this type of irrigation now and there is a lot of readily available market locally since most of the crops are out of the season this time.
The mobilization meeting with the Navinkhula community also explained the way on how communities around are going to utilize the scheme, the selection criteria for those who are going to benefit from the scheme, use of manure and management of the solar panels for irrigation.
The communities were urged to come up with a committee that is going to oversee activities at the irrigation scheme. There are a total of 25 (14 women and 11 men) identified members for the irrigation site at Kapoka. The scheme is been developed with financial support from MISEREOR in Germany.