By Charles Mangwiro MAPUTO, March 12 (Reuters) - Mozambique's National Relief Agency (INGC) said on Monday it expects to resettle 140,000 victims of last month's floods by mid-April. Weeks of heavy rain triggered flash floods along the Zambezi river and its tributaries in February, killing 45 people and displacing 170,000 in the southern African nation, still rebuilding after a 16-year civil war that ended in 1991. Of the displaced, 140,000 were housed in temporary shelters. It was the worst flooding to hit the former Portuguese colony since 2000-2001 floods killed 700 people and drove half a million from their homes. "Our focus is that by mid-April we will have nobody in the accommodation centres. We have started encouraging those who feel that they can start a new life to leave the accommodation centres," INGC director Paulo Zucula said. Mozambique needs close to $71 million to rebuild after last month's twin disasters of widespread flooding and a devastating cyclone, which displaced over 285,000 people along the Zambezi valley and others in the tourist province of Inhambane. "We have submitted the resettlement programme for approval during a cabinet meeting on Tuesday. We have decentralised the management of accommodation centres to provincial structures and we are concentrating our efforts on creating substantive logistics for the whole (crisis) process," Zucula said. International aid agencies have expressed deep concern over erratic weather patterns in southern Africa which have devastated harvest prospects for millions of people and could spell another year of widespread foot shortages. "Just before the floods, we had almost half a million people in 48 districts facing acute hunger, and this is exactly where the floods struck. We are now looking into providing drought-resistant and improved seeds, maybe this can work wonders during this year's harvest," Zucula said. Mozambique is in its sixth consecutive year of poor harvests. The U.N. World Food Programme's deputy country director, Peter Rodrigues, told Reuters his organisation would keep on feeding flood victims in Mozambique until the effects are reduced.
