ANGOLA: WFP set to cut rations as money runs out

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

LUANDA, 14 Apr 2005 (IRIN) - The World Food Programme (WFP) could be forced to cut its already reduced emergency food rations to hundreds of thousands of vulnerable Angolans unless it receives much-needed support from donors.

"If we get no further contributions in the next couple of weeks, then, come the early part of the third quarter, we will have to cut rations even more," WFP Country Director Rick Corsino told IRIN.

A lack of funding has already compelled the UN food agency to halve the cereal quota it currently provides to around 750,000 Angolans, mainly refugees and the internally displaced who have returned home after the end of the country's 27-year civil conflict.

Additional donations have recently come from the United States, Norway and Switzerland, as well as a US $4 million contribution by the Angolan government, but WFP has only received around 50 percent of what it asked for and still needs $30 million to keep its operation running until the end of 2005.

"These latest contributions will allow us to keep up our distributions until the early part of the third quarter - after that we will begin to run out of various commodities," Corsino said.

WFP currently assists almost one million people - around three-quarters of them returnees who came home with the few assets they could carry in their arms and on their heads - in desperate need of food aid.

Since the cut in the cereal allowance, Corsino said, the rations did not yield even the basic nutritional requirements, but were a mere supplement to help sustain the returnees as they tried to survive from subsistence farming, which often did not provide enough.

"If they have to forage for food they are not using the time, at this critical juncture, to put together accommodation or shelter, or start planting seeds for their future," he pointed out. While searching they often also ventured into dangerous areas still littered with landmines.

The WFP plan is to provide food aid until the first harvest - a cutback from the initial plan to support the returnees through two agricultural cycles - which meant that more than half the returnees might no longer need food assistance once they began to reap the rewards of their farming efforts.

"We aim to supply food aid during a complete agricultural cycle, so some beneficiaries will drop out. With the harvest coming in by mid-year we will legitimately be able to reduce the benefits we supply," Corsino explained.

However, around 75,000 returnees from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Zambia and Namibia were expected to make their way back to Angola this year and would need WFP assistance.

Corsino said donors were shying away from ploughing more funds into oil-rich Angola, and there was a feeling that the country had enough cash in its coffers to feed its own population.

"Angola is an oil country, and the oil price is going through the ceiling - the donors are less enthusiastic about supporting a country, which, they believe, could do more to help the rural population," he noted.

"I would counteract that by saying that Angola's needs are enormous - everything needs to be rebuilt," he added. "The government could maybe do a bit more, but the challenges in front of them are overwhelming, and certainly beyond them at this point in time."

Corsino urged the donor community not to abandon Angola as it entered the final stretch of its post-war resettlement process. "It would be like giving the ball away right in front of the goal."

In 2006 WFP hopes to switch its efforts to recovery by focusing on programmes, such as school feeding, which fell to one side as funds were used to make up the shortfall in its emergency resettlement projects.

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