Food shortages worry Chachis communities due to health emergency

The restriction of river transport prevents food from reaching the towns, so they ask for humanitarian aid.

Almost a month after the coronavirus health emergency was decreed, the Chachis who live in three cantons of the Esmeraldas province request humanitarian aid because food is scarce in their towns.

One of the problems they must face is the distance, since to reach the populations it is done by river.

The chachis are based in the Eloy Alfaro, Muisne and Quinindé cantons. For example, the inhabitants of Zapallo Grande, in Eloy Alfaro, are three hours from Borbón, by the river. Since the quarantine began, families have not been able to sell the fine aroma cocoa production they produce, as well as handicrafts and even more access to food.

In Bourbon, river transport was also restricted and only two boats sail the communities of the Cayapas River daily.

Before the crisis, 1,200 people used the river service daily and today they have been reduced to 200. On the banks of the Cayapas river 38 of the 52 indigenous communities settle, dedicated to planting cocoa, plantain and wood extraction , part of the economic activities of the chachis.

Santiago de la Cruz, president of the Esmeraldas chachis centers, stated that with the help of the Raíz Foundation, food rations have been distributed to 500 families from the Canandé river, in the Quinindé canton, such as Naranjal, Guayacana, Las Pavas, Agua Clara and Ñampi.

With the same foundation and the help of other organizations, it aims to bring food to other indigenous communities.

The mayor of the canton Eloy Alfaro, David Rosero, said that the delay in state transfers to the Municipality affects when responding to the emergency.

The representatives of the Union of Black Organizations of Eloy Alfaro also joined the request to attend to the populations that stopped producing due to the health emergency.

Source: El Comercio, social networks