US government provides food aid

The United States is to provide Malawi with US $5.4 million in emergency food aid in response to the government's appeal for international assistance to help overcome the country's food crisis. A statement released on Wednesday said the US Agency for International Development (USAID) would provide the UN World Food Programme (WFP) with 11,330 mt of food aid, including 10,000 mt of maize, for shipment to Malawi in June and July. The relief assistance would be distributed through an NGO consortium working closely with district authorities, the National Economic Council's (NEC) Safety Net Programme and the Department of Disaster Preparedness, Relief and Rehabilitation (DDPRR), the statement said. USAID Malawi Assistant Director Dwight Smith told IRIN that the food would benefit 90,000 families or 450,000 individuals. The aid would be used for direct feeding to the most vulnerable, including children, pregnant and lactating mothers, people living with HIV/AIDS and the elderly. The statement said the programme would also be complemented by food for work initiatives to provide food to those who are able-bodied but cannot afford to purchase maize at market prices. In declaring a national disaster in February, the government said that seven million people out of a population of 10 million had no food. Floods, drought and a government decision to sell off its grain reserves - arguing that they were old - contributed to the food crisis. Local maize from this year's harvest is now in local markets and the price has fallen from the official selling price of Mk 850 (US $11.4) to Mk 500 (US $6.7) per 50 kg bag. However, DDPRR commissioner Lucius Chikuni said on Wednesday that 1.5 million people still needed food aid and described the situation as "pretty bad". Due to hungry villagers harvesting maize too early, Malawi is also expected to face a short fall of 600,000 mt of maize in next year's harvest on a projected yield of 1.4 million mt. Meanwhile, President Bakili Muluzi on Wednesday told a rally in Phalombe district, 60 km from Blantyre, that he would re-introduce the "starter pack scheme", which offered free seeds and fertilizers to subsistence farmers to boost food production. He said under the programme, Malawi harvested about 2.8 million mt of maize each year between 1994 and 1999, well above domestic demand. "But problems started when the donors said we should cut the number of recipients for the starter pack from 2.3 million to one million in the Targeted Input Programme (TIP)." He said TIP, which targets the poorest of the poor, was discriminatory in its distribution unlike the starter pack that was provided to everybody.