Poor state of roads hampers aid agencies

Aid groups in Angola have called for the emergency repair and de-mining of roads and bridges if the country is to avert a new humanitarian emergency. Most of Angola's transport network was ruined by years of war and neglect, and aid workers expect the situation to deteriorate with the onset of the rainy season. Moreover, the ever-present danger of landmines also grows during the rainy season, as landmines are brought closer to the surface when the soil is washed away. Although the World Food Programme (WFP) and NGOs have reported a steady improvement in the humanitarian situation in the country, access to certain areas remains limited. WFP has noted that the road from Ambriz to Bela-Vista in Bengo province was still closed to UN agencies due to the security concerns and poor road conditions. Thus thousands of people in need have been unable to access humanitarian aid. WFP warned in its latest situation report that, "due to drought more than 3,000 people in Bela-Vista Commune, [in the] municipality of Ambriz ... are reportedly in a precarious food situation". But aid personnel have been unable to reach them because "the road from Ambriz to Bela-Vista is still closed to UN personnel". "When the rains come, there is a risk that the roads and even the warehouses will be flooded. [The] transport of new food will be practically impossible," Simon Trepanier, officer-in-charge at WFP's Huambo office, told IRIN. Presently 435,000 people in Huambo - close to a third of all beneficiaries in Angola - receive food and seeds from WFP. Food aid is transported from the port city of Lobito, 300 km away, most of it by road. Although the road between Huambo and Lobito - Angola's second- and third-largest cities respectively - is one of the busiest routes in the country, there is little evidence of repair. IRIN learnt that it takes a WFP driver up to 14 hours to travel between the two cities. The road is littered with broken-down trucks and cars, and drivers camping next to their vehicles while they wait for assistance is a common sight. The WFP logistics officer in Lobito, Robert Sanchez, told IRIN that during the rainy period - November through April - the situation is compounded and WFP trucks have occasionally needed military assistance to pull them from flooded roads during the rainy season. Another concern was the steady influx of returning refugees to Huambo, Trepanier said. It is estimated that between 2,000 and 3,000 people are still returning to the province every week. "This area is completely destroyed. People eat bananas and leaves. They have a hard time cultivating the land [in] the first year, after such a long time of fallow," Trepanier said. He warned that if returnees did not have a harvest in the spring, they may have to rely on food aid until at least 2006. "The risk of an increase in malnutrition, due to problems with food distribution, is not immediate. Most of the people receiving food have established small-scale farming - they can sustain themselves a few months without the help of WFP. It will be worse for those arriving during or after the rains," Trepanier said. A number of small-scale road restoration projects have been started. In Kwanza-Sul province, in the west, the National Institute for Roads in Angola (INEA) is currently working on the road between two provincial cities, but the project is slow and costly. "Most of the roads in Angola have not been restored since 1975. The government was completely focused on military material. The investments that were made, were those that benefited the government with regard to the war," provincial director at INEA Kwanza-Sul, Salgado da Piedade Paixão Amor, told IRIN. He added that the cost of building one kilometre of asphalt road is US $100,000. While a gravel road costs US $20,000 per kilometre. "We do not have that kind of money. We have money for salaries, but not for building," Paixão Amor said. The institute has been working on one of the main provincial roads in Kwanza-Sul since July, and has so far restored half the 30 km projected for completion by August this year. "We want to do this slowly otherwise it will not be done properly," Paixão Amor said. The INEA aims to rehabilitate 360 km of secondary roadway and 550 km of tertiary roads. The WFP field officer in Kwanza-Sul, Hiro Matsumura, remains concerned. According to him, the humanitarian problems are worse in Kwanza-Sul than in other parts of the country. While there are more vulnerable communities in Huambo, ongoing accessibility problems in Kwanza-Sul make the food-security situation far more precarious, he concluded. "Without faster action on infrastructure, many people might face a new wave of emergency," Matsumura said.