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A spokesman for WFP In Abidjan told IRIN today the UN food aid agency was worried about the 300,000 IDPs who recently started returning to their homes before the outbreak of fighting on Sunday. Bissau is now lacking water because of interrupted electricity supplies, the spokesman said.
“These people will have problems in coping,” he added. He said they had no money and had not yet settled in after fleeing fighting at the start of hostilities in June 1998. Since that date, he said, WFP had given 8,000 mt of food to 300,000 people throughout the country, mostly IDPs.
A WFP survey in December 1998, he said, indicated that the country’s food situation had improved except for some areas in the north and south due to a rice crop failure. December’s harvest was good and most markets were stocked with sufficient food. “However, large sections of the population did not have enough cash to buy food,” he added.
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions
