IDPs unhappy at bread instead of wheat

Internally displaced persons (IDPs) at Maslakh, western Afghanistan's largest displacement camp, are complaining of hunger after a change in the wheat assistance they were being given by the UN World Food Programme (WFP). Recipients are currently receiving one loaf of bread per person each day instead of an earlier wheat ration of 277 grammes. "I will beg. I cannot take it any more," Muhammad Wazir told IRIN in Maslakh. The 70-year-old fled Towr Ghundi, a border area with neighbouring Turkmenistan, some 130 km north of Herat, five months earlier along with his six family members after losing his flock of sheep to the ongoing drought in the region. His last possessions were sold to pay the fare to Maslakh, he explained. Today, Wazir complains of hunger after receiving one loaf of bread for each family member every day from the camp bakeries under the WFP food aid assistance programme to the thousands IDPs in Maslakh, 20 km west of the provincial capital. "My children demand more food, and I can do nothing but weep," he said. Abdullah, another IDP from northwestern Faryab Province shared Wazir's despair. "We are here because we have lost everything and cannot grow our food. We are not getting enough here," he said. Some 150 families from his tribe now want to return to their villages despite being warned by aid agencies that security in Faryab was inadequate, he added. But while many IDPs want to revert to wheat, which they received at regular intervals until bakeries were opened in March, WFP contends that it had actually increased, as opposed to decreased, the quantity of food being allocated. Amir Muhammad Ibrahim, an agency programme officer in Herat, maintained that the IDPs were now receiving 400 grammes of bread every day under the new arrangement as compared to the 277 grammes of raw wheat they had been receiving. "This was necessary to utilise our food properly," he told IRIN. Employing locals, WFP has established 74 bakeries catering for more than 65,000 camp residents every day. "It's the same thing. You can sell wheat, but you cannot sell bread," Ibrahim explained. WFP made the changes after aid workers observed that some IDPs with multiple ration cards were selling the wheat in local markets. "Nobody can access the family compound, and you never know how many people are getting the assistance," he said. Meanwhile, Hazica, an official of the Afghan ministry of repatriation, maintained that the changeover was a major problem in the camp and would remain so in the future. "The people do not have a choice. One [loaf of] bread is too little for people used to eating three times a day," she told IRIN.