When Cyclone Enawo struck north eastern Madagascar on the morning of March 7, travelling at 200 to 300 km per hour, the country and its people were prepared and a number of measures were put in place to limit losses.
However, the wind damages and the widespread flooding left behind by the cyclone severely affected the livelihood of the people of the north-east.
The response, led by the Government of Madagascar through the Bureau National de Gestion des Risques et Catastrophes (BNGRC), has been supported since the early days by the Logistics Cluster.
As part of this response, a river transport service has been set up to reach the fluvial communities around Maroantsetra. These communities are only accessible navigating a shallow river, hence only using small crafts. The Logistics Cluster mobilised the local community to use traditional pirogues for the transport and to rehabilitate the docks at the river port where these pirogues are berthed.
With the support of the Logistics Cluster, UNICEF was able to distribute education kits to six communes, BNGRC reached people across ten communes with 222 mt of food and school kits to ten communes, and WFP delivered 231 mt of rice, pulses and HEBs to 6,300 people across eight communes. Of these 6,300 people, 1,500 were reached in Antakotako, a remote commune which takes one day by pirogue to reach; to implement WFP distributions, three tents were transported on behalf of BNGRC and set up to preposition the commodities.
The population of Maroantsetra is truly invested in the activities carried out by the Logistics Cluster under the lead of the BNGRC and this is why it was possible to overcome the challenges of last mile distribution in such a complex environment.
