Nsanje district council Assistant Land Conservation Officer, Leonard Malirana, told Zodiak Online project activities will start by the end of this month.

“The names of beneficiaries are drawn from the Unified Beneficiary Registry (UBR). We scrutinize the names per catchment to ensure that the program benefits the intended beneficiaries,” explained Malirana.

He added that “we have 16 catchments in the district. The climate public works program is aimed at empowering the communities to conserve their land as you are aware that most of the land is degraded.

“The activities include nursery establishment, construction of the marker ridges and construction of water holding trenches,” said Malirani.

Nsanje district council yesterday, Wednesday, briefed the media in the district ahead of the second cycle.

According to Malirana, the beneficiaries receive K14, 400 per month and get K28, 800 after working for two months.

He said the communities identify their own projects adding that they work for 12 days plus five days as part of community contribution.

“Cyclone Freddy damaged a lot of conservation structures in these catchments so as a council with the community we will be going back during this coming cycle to rehabilitate the damaged structures.

“Our soils are degraded. We believe most areas will be conserved because the communities are owning the project,” said Malirana.

He further disclosed that beneficiaries under the program have been included on lean season program support where they will get K150, 000.

In the first cycle, Nsanje had 17681 beneficiaries under the climate smart public works program.

District council spokesperson, Robert Nayeja, says the figure will go down to around 14,000 beneficiaries in the second cycle, “due to other anomalies in the UBR."