WFP launches major Kabul food survey

This week WFP is to begin a two-day household survey in the Afghan capital Kabul in advance of its first major food distribution, four weeks after Northern Alliance (NA) forces entered the city in the wake of the Taliban's retreat. In the largest exercise of its kind, the survey will register over one million of the capital's most vulnerable population, issuing them with coupons for food collection. "The survey is hugely significant because it will pave the way for an enormous post-conflict emergency distribution," WFP spokeswoman Lindsey Davis told IRIN on Monday. She added that the aim of the house-to-house survey in Kabul was to register and issue food coupons to 1.1 million people. The whole process from registration to distribution will take seven to 10 days, she said. Afghan women will be employed to conduct the survey, after years of being banned from working by the Taliban. Some 2,424 women along with 1,200 men will carry out the exercise. "Its the first time that huge numbers of women are employed in Afghanistan and it's the first step for women to come forward," Davis said. WFP would pay the women US $20-40 for a week's work depending on the level of responsibility. Meanwhile, WFP reported that some six million Afghans are in desperate need of food aid throughout the country. Although the agency reached its monthly food aid target of 52,000 mt on 15 November, an estimated 1.7 million people still urgently require food aid in the central highlands region before winter sets in. To this end, a 24-member Swedish Rescue Services team, equipped with 50 heavy duty trucks and snowploughs, plan to set up base camps in Panjou, Bamian and Chaghcharan in the region to facilitate food distribution. Together with a three-member avalanche control unit, they will ensure land access to central Afghanistan over winter. In addition, WFP is trucking food in from Turkmenistan, Iran and Pakistan and has started to airlift food to Feyzabad in northeastern Afghanistan.