Pakistan’s wheat land is still secure: WFP

ISLAMABAD: The World Food Programme (WFP) is aiming to provide food rations to last a month to six million people and assess upcoming challenges before launching a new appeal by mid September, says WFP’s country director for Pakistan, Wolfgang Herbinger.

The agency is also in the process of enriching its food basket, adding yellow peas, salt, tea and sugar to it. Herbinger says that while crops have suffered a lot of damage, “wheat land is still secure. The country still has enough wheat, which is the ingredient for high energy biscuits and baby food.”

Further good news is that the number of people who could only be reached by air, previously 800,000, is decreasing. As the water is receding, more people are becoming accessible.

For instance, the first four out of intended 20 trucks have been able to access the town of Utror in the Swat Valley, until now accessible only by air. “WFP has managed to reach about 100,000 people in Gilgit-Baltistan; this figure is definitely changing every day,” says Herbinger.

Nevertheless, accessibility still remains a big challenge, especially in the north of the country. “Northern areas remain a question mark. Some parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, such as Swat, Shangla, Kohistan and Gilgit–Baltistan, are still a concern,” says the WFP’s logistics cluster coordinator for Pakistan, Simon Hacker.

“Soon winters will begin and the issue will become greater,” adds Hacker. “There is still a remaining gap of 30 helicopters which needs to be filled soon. The UN currently has four helicopters and plans to bring six more. These 10 helicopters will cost around $17million for a two-month operation and hopefully we will not extend the time frame. However, as needs increase so does the figure demanded, so donors need to step up.”

“The old appeal was far too less; we had no clue how big the problem would become. We need to revise certain things keeping in mind the newer challenges,” says Herbinger.

The WFP country director adds that they “will conduct a workshop next week with concerned departments such as the Food and Agriculture Organisation and analyse the 2009 report in terms of the food situation before and after the floods. Last year it was the Internally Displaced Persons crisis, but this year the challenge is greater.”

Amid new flooding in Sindh, the WFP is establishing an additional operational hub in Hyderabad. “We are going back to southern Sindh this week to review the food security situation there,” says Herbinger.

The WFP is dealing with 60 per cent of the food distribution in flood-hit areas and has at least 600 trucks deliver food across the country.

The agency is hoping to soon move from the assistance to the early recovery phase. “During the next six months, relief will be smaller and the recovery plan will become bigger. We will try to get people back on their own feet and earning their living,” says Herbinger.

The WFP is providing 6,500 seed kits to help flood-affected people in Swat, Upper and Lower Dir, and Buner. Two thousand out of these are suitable for small plots, while 4,500 are designed to feed households and provide a surplus for them to sell. Assessments are ongoing in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa for small-scale infrastructure projects suitable for food-for-work programmes. It is hoped that they can be started in the coming week, such as restoring irrigation channels.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 6^th, 2010.