WFP warns of food shortage

The World Food Programme (WFP) said on Wednesday it had been forced to scale down some food aid programmes in Afghanistan because of shortages of cash and food. "We have immediate cash needs," Alejandro Chicheri, a WFP spokesman, told IRIN from the Afghan capital, Kabul. "We are more or less 48 percent underfunded," he added. Last week, a WFP situation report said the agency faced a shortfall of 254,000 mt of food worth US $138 million. The agency had appealed for $285 million of which it has received only $105 million from donors so far. It had about $42 million carry-over from the previous year. "Because of an immediate shortfall of 50,000 mt through June, WFP has had to take measures to scale down distributions, disrupting and suspending school feeding, food-for-work and food-for- asset-creation activities," the report said. Under the school feeding programme, WFP provides more than a million children with a meal a day. It also warned that unless contributions were confirmed soon, there would be a total break in the pipeline in July, just when millions of Afghans would be struggling with the most difficult pre-harvest time. May and June are considered to be the leanest periods in terms of domestic food supply in Afghanistan. Chicheri said that by December, WFP planned to help close to 10 million people in Afghanistan, where the impact of three years of the worst drought in living memory were still clearly visible. To determine the size of the harvest and other crop-related matters in Afghanistan, the UN food agency and Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) are carrying out a joint crop assessment mission. The crop assessment report will be released before the harvest in July. "If cash is not received, there will be strong consequences," Chicheri noted, noting that some 40 percent of the Afghan population remained entirely dependent on food assistance.