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Food
relief operators are overwhelmed
IRIN
News
November
14, 2008
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=81475
Impatience among
the hungry and food relief operations put on the back foot by a
nearly three-month ban
are complicating an already desperate situation as Zimbabwe barrels
towards its peak food crisis, less than two months away. The UN
estimates that in the first quarter of 2009 more than 5.1 million
people, nearly half the population, will require food assistance,
although many humanitarian workers privately fear the extent of
malnutrition may be deeper than first thought, a worrying situation
that has surfaced in the past few days after a severe funding shortfall
resulted in a cut in food rations to below the minimum monthly requirement.
Preparations by food relief agencies for the impending crisis were
compromised by President Robert Mugabe's ban on their operations
- for alleged political partisanship - as he fought for his political
life during a presidential run-off that he eventually won, although
the high levels of violence and intimidation made the international
community dismiss the poll as unfree and unfair.
The ban disrupted the
vetting process of potential beneficiaries and the delay in distributions
are causing rising levels of frustration among those in need of
emergency food assistance. Effort Ncube, 54, whose extended family
includes his four children, eight grand-daughters and several other
relatives, has survived on the roots and wild fruits available in
Matabeleland South Province for the past four months. "The
donor agencies are taking long, and already, as it is, we are facing
death due to hunger, but some villages have benefited from food
donations. But we have been assured by the relief agencies that
we will be benefiting soon," he told IRIN. Ncube's family has
borrowed relief food from people in the neighbouring districts of
Ntepe and Gwanda, who have received the reduced food rations from
World Vision, a Christian relief and development non-governmental
organisation (NGO). "Once we get our rations then we will pay
back what we got from the neighbours, but the rations are taking
too long to come," Ncube said. World Vision is covering six
of the seven districts in Matabeleland South Province.
Rations have been cut
to below the recommended monthly calorific minimum in response to
dwindling food supplies, as international donors have failed to
heed a US$140 million emergency appeal by the UN World Food Programme
(WFP). At current rates, WFP has sufficient food supplies to last
until the end of December. Each person now receives a monthly ration
of 10kg of maize, 1kg of beans and 0.6 litres of cooking oil, in
a bid to stretch resources. Recipients were previously given 12kg
of maize and 1.8kg of beans. "We are still vetting some communities
and verifying information that we have, and because of the magnitude
of the crisis and the objective of feeding all deserving cases,
the vetting process has not been easy due to the numbers involved,"
Wilfred Sikhukhula, director of World Vision's Humanitarian Emergency
Aid, one of the relief agencies falling under the US-funded Consortium
for Southern Africa Food Security Emergency (C-SAFE), told IRIN.
"We are making up
for the lost time. The process should have started long before the
situation got so bad, but we were not on the ground [because of
the government ban]. The need in the country currently is overwhelming,"
he said. "We have had a situation where communities are doing
whatever they can to access food, and that in some instances includes
them inflating the number of family members ... we have to go through
the figures and rectify where there are anomalies before we can
commence the feeding process," Sikhukhula said. An aid worker,
who declined to be named, told IRIN that the exaggeration of family
sizes was becoming commonplace, as "people, out of hunger,
believe if they inflate the numbers they will get more and they
will not starve in future." The strict processes used to determine
need are not readily understood by the beneficiaries, and the wait
for food assistance often translates into accusations of favouritism
by humanitarian agencies.
"The relief agencies
are selective - how did they decide which village to start with,
and which people to give the food to? Some people, who are deserving,
were removed from the list and were told that they will not get
any food," an irate Martha Sibanda, 49, in the Dongamuzi area
near Lupane, the provincial capital of Matabeleland North Province,
told IRIN. Relief agencies use a standard procedure for determining
who should receive food first: top of the list are households headed
by children, the elderly and the chronically ill, followed by single-parent
families, households with orphans, and families with a high dependency
ratio. Next in line are beneficiaries that include families with
no fixed or temporary income, families with no ownership or custody
of assets with a market value that could be exchanged for cash or
barter, and those without remittances from national or international
sources.
Raviro Mahara, 46, a
single parent of three children in Chirumanzi district, about 120km
southeast of Gweru, the Midlands provincial capital, went on a fruitless
100km journey on foot searching for maize. She had left her children
with no food, apart from a small stock of the wild fruit known locally
as hacha. "I had been away for four days looking for maize-meal
for my three children and myself, but could not get it because where
it was available, it was being sold in foreign currency, which I
did not have," Mahara told IRIN. In desperation she submitted
her name, with other people from her district, to an NGO operating
in the area and after three days was called to a local shopping
centre, where staff from the NGO provided each family with 20kg
of maize-meal, two litres of cooking oil and 10kg of maize seed.
"It was such a relief. Without that help from the NGO my family
would have definitely starved. Considering the size of my family,
and given that we have to depend on what has been given to us almost
exclusively, the food aid is not much, but that little makes a big
difference," she said.
Without the donation,
her final option would have been to slaughter one of her two remaining
cows, but it would have left her without draught power for the main
farming season, which has already begun. Rugare Gadaga, 60, who
lives in the same area, also received a donation from the NGO. "I
just hope this is the beginning of good things to come. For months,
officials from the district headquarters have been sending word
that we will soon receive food aid from the government, but promises
don't drive our hunger away," he told IRIN. "I wonder
why the same government that purports to be disturbed by our plight
has been barring the NGOs from distributing food to us, only to
reverse that position when some people have starved to death,"
he said.
Gadaga's son,
Samuel, 30, has a job as a supervisor at a Gweru factory. His salary
of a few dollars a month, which is continually eroded by the inflation
rate of 231 million percent, supports his five children and his
father. "Urban life is now so stressful, and I am struggling
to keep my head above the water, fending for my family. After every
two weeks I am forced to look for 20kg of maize to send home, and
my prayer is that the NGOs continue with their work, for that will
lessen my burden," Samuel told IRIN. Fambai Ngirande, spokesperson
for the National
Association of Non-Governmental Organisations, the NGO umbrella
body, told IRIN that the distribution of food "though still
coming in small measures, is refreshing". "People have
nowhere to turn to but NGOs because the government, even though
it is supposed to play the leading role in ensuring food security
for affected communities, is proving to lack capacity or will,"
he commented. "It should be remembered that relief operators
are overwhelmed, and are constrained by the lack of resources and
politically motivated disruptions as the food crisis deepens daily."
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