WFP forced to cut food rations by half

The World Food Programme (WFP) said on Wednesday that shipping delays had forced it to slash by half the amount of food earmarked for distribution to 2.2 million vulnerable Angolans this month. Marcelo Spina-Hering, spokesman for the UN food agency in Angola, said the delays had come at a very bad time with the demand for food distribution at its highest for several years because of the country's resettlement process and the beginning of the agricultural season. "This is very bad timing. The delay in shipments coming into Angola has seriously affected our pipeline of stocks," Spina-Hering told IRIN. WFP was ensuring that the most vulnerable sections of the population received the bulk of their rations, but Spina-Hering said the agency was keeping a close watch on distributions now so that it did not run out of food in the coming months. "We are looking into every possibility to minimise the impact on distributions in November and December, but it is possible these months may be affected to," he said. Bad weather and technical glitches were behind the delays, he said, noting that one ship carrying 14,000 mt and due to come into port in July had yet to arrive. Around 4,000 mt of maize aboard one vessel where humidity was unusually high had arrived covered in fungus and was unfit for human consumption, he added.