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UN increases food distribution in Zimbabwe
Ntungamili Nkomo, OhmyNews
February 12, 2008

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_class=3&no=381754&rel_no=1

The World Food Program has scaled up its operations in troubled Zimbabwe amid a deepening food crisis that threatens 4 million people with hunger and starvation, the UN aid agency says.

"In view of the worsening food shortages, we have since increased the number of beneficiaries from 2.5 million in December to about 3 million people this month," said Richard Lee, the WFP regional spokesperson for southern Africa.

Aid agencies say 4 million people are in need of aid assistance in Zimbabwe. But Lee says the number will subside around June as a bumper harvest is widely anticipated.

He added that WFP was hard at work in the country's 10 provinces parceling out the staple corn meal to families bearing the brunt of successive droughts that have severely reduced food production in a country once revered as the breadbasket of Africa. To date, Zimbabwe is widely chided as Africa's basket case.

Critics blame the acute food shortages on the government's land redistribution program that dispossessed hundreds of productive white commercial farmers of their farms. Consequently, food production was reduced by more than 50 percent.

Lee said their distribution teams were having trouble accessing some of the areas that have been affected by recent flooding.

"At the moment I would say we have sufficient food and funding but there are logistical problems that have arisen in some areas. For instance we cannot reach those areas that have been hit by floods recently," Lee commented.

The WFP's food distribution is targeted mostly at people living in the countryside. But the agency says it is also distributing aid packages to 300,000 people affected by HIV in the urban areas, including the elderly and families headed by children.

Other aid agencies such as World Vision and Christian Care are also distributing aid in Zimbabwe.

President Mugabe's government late last year declared 2007 a drought year and Zimbabwe has survived by importing food from Malawi, South Africa and Zambia to supplement dwindling reserves.

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