WFP targets infrastructure development

The World Food Programme (WFP) is to launch an infrastructural rehabilitation programme in Malawi among households that require food assistance, the agency’s representative told IRIN.

Wilfred Banmbuh said the two-year rehabilitation programme, to be carried out in 14 of the 27 districts of Malawi, will begin in September and run up to December 2001. Under the scheme, affected communities select the basic infrastucture in their areas for upgrading in return for food aid. WFP plans to distribute 10,000 mt of food items through the programme.

“We have already set up district assemblies who have identified degraded infrastructure that needs rehabilitation,” Banmbuh said. “The new programme will focus its development activities on priority areas such as enabling young children and pregnant mothers meet their nutritional and nutrition-related health needs.”

The rehabilitation initiative replaces a just concluded WFP food-for-work programme. “WFP will ensure that the new programme meets the food security needs of the communities identified by themselves,” said Banmbuh.

He added that under the food-for-work scheme, at least 560 km of village access roads were rehabilitated, 312 hectares of small-scale irrigation projects were initiated and that at least 190 hectares of community forestry projects were developed.

“We have met up to 90 percent of our goals in the previous programme,” Banmbuh said. Under the previous programme, carried out from 1998, employment was created for about 33,000 households who utilised 6,500 mt of distributed food items, he noted.