Helicopters needed to bring aid: WFP

GENEVA: The UN World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday that it urgently needed helicopters to get food to millions of flood victims in Pakistan who remain cut off by high waters.

“At the moment, we’re recognising that there’s a real massive need for a boost in air delivery capacity immediately to reach the people who remain cut off and those who are going to continue to be affected in the weeks to come,” said WFP spokesperson Emilia Casella.

The WFP has managed to secure another five choppers which would be put into service on Friday, bringing to 15 the total number of helicopters in use.

Casella did not have a figure of how many more are needed, but said: “You could bring in a lot of helicopters and we will use them all. We need the helicopters now at this stage,” she added, pointing out that they are essential at the moment as roads remain cut off by flood waters.

The agency has managed to get one-month food rations to 1.2 million flood victims but Casella noted that the figure was far from the agency’s target of six million.

Elisabeth Byrs, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), said that UN agencies were ramping up their aid effort and that the international community was also coming forward to help. “There is currently a movement of solidarity...We have received 55 per cent of the amount of the 460-million-dollar appeal that we had launched,” she said.

But Byrs also stressed that the full picture of the devastation by the floods was only beginning to emerge. “It’s a disaster that came very slowly. It’s not an earthquake that hits suddenly and we can immediately see the victims. But we are now seeing the magnitude of this catastrophe,” she said.

The UN was also expected to raise its funding appeal in the coming weeks, she said.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 21^st, 2010.