Food shortages reported in the northeast

Hundreds of thousands of people in the northeastern Karamoja region are short of food following widespread crop failure, a Ugandan government minister told IRIN on Wednesday. Peter Lokeris Aimat, minister of state for Karamoja affairs, said the Uganda government had estimated that up to 70 percent of the 700,000 nomadic pastoralists living in the region were affected. "The food situation is very bad," he told IRIN. "Some people are eating leaves and wild fruits that are unsuitable for human consumption," he added. The World Food Programme (WFP) country director in Uganda, Ken Davies, told IRIN that arrangements were being made to start distributing relief food in the most affected areas. "Up to 200,000 people will be receiving relief food by the end of this month," Davies said. "WFP will feed up to 500,000 by June." Already, he added, 60,000 children had been receiving WFP rations under the school feeding programme. According to Lokeris, people who still had some food in their granaries could only sustain themselves up to March or April, well before they could embark on planting crops that would be ready in August, he added. "When I go to address them [the Karamojong], they ask me for food," the minister said. "Some have food that can sustain them up to March or April, but after April, they need to be adequately fed to be strong enough to cultivate and feed themselves up to August when the first yield is expected." He said some children and elderly people had left parts of the region in search of pasture and water for their cattle. The cattle, however, were not producing much milk or blood - which the Karamojong consume. Lokeris said the Ugandan government was trying to arrange to start feeding some of the affected people. In September, the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net), warned in an alert that the Karamoja region could suffer food shortages. "An extended dry spell in the drought-prone Karamoja region disrupted pasture growth and cultivation of major staples and could result in deterioration in the food security of the population in this area," FEWS Net noted. Second season rains, it noted, had delayed across the region. Karamoja region is made up of three districts - Kotido, Moroto and Nakapiripiriti. The region is Uganda’s "wild west". It has the highest number of illegal arms an estimated 40,000 guns in the hands of civilians, who say they use them to guard their stocks against rival tribes. A disarmament programme introduced by the government is ongoing.