WFP expecting numerous pipeline breaks

The World Food Programme (WFP) is expecting numerous pipeline breaks in its food distribution programmes in Sierra Leone in the coming months. In its latest emergency report dated 12 October, the agency said that by December 2001, it expects a cereal short fall of 3,427 tons. "WFP has no sufficient stocks of oil to meet delivery requirements for October, with the next shipment expected in February 2002," it said.

It also expects shortfalls in sugar- about 247 tons- and salt by December. "Continued shortfalls in salt have resulted in exclusion of salt from the Emergency School Feeding Programme ration and will be reintroduced as soon as the shipment has arrived in October, which will last until December," it added.

The agency carried out food distributions to a number of beneficiaries in various programmes in different parts of the country during the first week of October. Some 29 tons of food was distributed to 7,658 primary school students along Freetown Peninsula and Koya Chiefdom in Port Loko district, north of Freetown.

Emergency School Feeding distribution also commenced on 3 October in 40 primary schools in Kambia and Port Loko districts, north of Freetown, with 44 tons of food distributed to 8,358 school children. Five tons of supplementary food was also distributed to 1841 malnourished children under five years old in therapeutic and supplementary feeding centres in Kenema district, in the east.

Some 8,285 farming families benefited from 157 tons of food through Food-for-Work projects in the northern districts of Bombali, Kambia and Port Loko. The agency also distributed three tons of food to 273 amputees and their dependents living within Bo township, south of Sierra Leone.