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Drastic
food aid cut for Zimbabwe, southern Africa
ZimOnline
October 27, 2006
http://www.zimonline.co.za/Article.aspx?ArticleId=358
JOHANNESBURG
– The World Food Programme (WFP) on Thursday said a massive funding
shortfall was forcing it to make drastic cuts in food aid to 4.3
million hungry southern Africans – nearly half of them Zimbabweans.
The WFP, which
is a major relief provider to hungry and vulnerable communities in
seven southern African states, said the US$60 million funding shortfall
was coming just as the region was facing its food supply "lean
period" when most people have to wait for the next harvest to
begin around next March or April.
Apart from hunger,
southern Africa is also ravaged by HIV/AIDS which for example kills
an estimated 3 000 people every week in Zimbabwe.
The WFP said after
relatively good harvests were reported last season, it had "scaled
down general food assistance to concentrate on the people with the
most chronic needs – such as those with HIV/AIDS."
But the United
Nations food relief agency said it had now instructed its offices
across southern Africa to begin reducing support to even these most
vulnerable groups because of the lack of donor support.
Countries like
Malawi, Namibia and Swaziland were facing cuts in assistance of as
high as 80 or even 100 percent, the WFP said. Other countries under
the operation – and facing similar shortfalls – include Lesotho, Mozambique,
and Zambia.
In Zimbabwe - once
able to feed itself and its neighbours before President Robert Mugabe’s
chaotic and often violent land reform disrupted the mainstay agricultural
sector – a May 2006 vulnerability assessment had identified 1.4 million
people as needing food aid.
But the WFP was
forced to scale assistance to roughly half of the 900 000 people it
was originally targeting. Funding shortages forced cuts in the urban
feeding and school-feeding programmes, and a suspension of mobile
feeding in rural areas.
"Further reductions
may have to be imposed unless resourcing improves," WFP regional
director for southern Africa Amir Abdulla said.
According to
revised figures, WFP needs at least US$17 million just to get Zimbabwe
through the lean season, when it expects to target some 1.9 million
people.
Hunger coupled
with HIV/AIDS will certainly condemn many Zimbabweans, also grappling
with their worst ever economic crisis since independence from Britain,
to a slow but sure death.
WFP regional
director for southern Africa Amir Abdulla said: "Hungry people are
less able to cope, they succumb more quickly to chronic disease.
Young children who are poorly nourished are more likely to die before
reaching their teens."
Southern Africa,
which also suffers from grinding poverty, received good rains last
season but harvests remained poor due to a variety of reasons among
them poor planning by governments that failed to ensure availability
of inputs, seeds, fertilizer and other chemicals for farmers to
grow enough food. - ZimOnline
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