WFP increases aid for recovery

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has increased its assistance to Tajikistan by 40 percent under its Protected Relief and Recovery Operation (PRRO), marking a transition from humanitarian relief to recovery and development in the country, IRIN was told on Wednesday. "Tajikistan is a low-income and food-deficit country needing food assistance," the WFP country director, Ardag Meghdessian, told IRIN from the Tajik capital, Dushanbe. "The shift of emphasis from relief to recovery indeed indicates increased stability in the country, as well as an improvement of the overall humanitarian situation," he said, adding that the devastating two-year drought in 2000 and 2001 was over. Recently, the agency's executive board approved a two-year programme for the country to begin this July through its PRRO. This project, known as "Assistance to Food-Insecure Households and Recovery Operations in Tajikistan", would entail the provision of 142,000 mt of food to some 1.4 million beneficiaries in the poverty-stricken mountainous Central Asian republic of 6.2 million people. The new project will have a total budget of US $74 million as opposed to $52 million for the previous one. But despite WFP's move from relief to recovery, Tajikistan still faces a humanitarian crisis, according to the EC. On Monday, the EC adopted a 10 million euro aid package for the former Soviet republic." The country is still facing an exceptional food emergency," said a statement from the Dushanbe office of the commission's humanitarian aid office, ECHO. WFP's programme would go ahead in parallel with relief and recovery activities, Meghdessian said. "The relief component is to provide food assistance to the most vulnerable groups, as well as to provide assistance to disaster victims," he noted. About 83 percent of the population is living below the national poverty line, defined as, less than $10 per person per month. WFP estimates 12 percent of Tajiks are extremely poor and 5 percent, or some 300,000 individuals, are considered destitute and in need of food aid. A recent agency food security survey showed that such vulnerable groups concentrate in villages of 27 districts out of a total of 58 in the republic. As opposed to past practice, when two-thirds of resources were geared towards relief, only one-third of the funding would be directed towards such assistance. Under the recovery efforts, the project will cater for the nutritional needs of malnourished children, pregnant and lactating women, treat and prevent tuberculosis, and work with psychiatric patients in the country. WFP will also provide training for farmers in poultry, beekeeping and other agricultural and income-generation activities. The agency will also support the government's efforts towards achieving food security by privatising farmland, which will further improve wheat production in the county where only seven percent of the land is arable. While providing food to some 370,000 school children in 1,600 institutions across the country, the school-feeding programme is one of the major components of the PRRO. "This will attract many children back to schools who had abandoned them for various reasons since independence 12 years ago," Meghdessian said. With a huge portion of Tajik infrastructure devastated during the five-year civil war between 1992 and 1997, many aid agencies rely on food-for-work projects for infrastructure rehabilitation and recovery activities. Under the WFP scheme, around 55,000 Tajiks will receive food aid in return for working to restore their schools, hospitals, bridges and roads. Meghdessian maintained that it was imperative to improve cereal production in the country in order to boost food security. "Inputs such as provision and availability of quality seeds, fertilisers and rehabilitation of irrigation systems need improvement," he said. Tajikistan currently produces only 40 percent of its cereal needs. He added that in view of very limited employment opportunities, more people were turning to agriculture on marginal lands, which was a major concern. "The marginal lands are very dependent on rainfall, which makes these people very vulnerable," he said.