Annan urges action against delays in safety-nets programme

Urgent action is needed to tackle delays in families receiving food or cash in Ethiopia’s flagship safety-nets programme, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Monday. He warned that the slow implementation of the scheme - which was launched in January to end dependency on aid for five million people - was fuelling malnutrition across the country. Under the programme, five million needy people were expected to be given food or cash in exchange for doing public work like building roads, but in some places families have received nothing. Other families had been excluded from the initiative because local authorities had imposed "ceilings" on those who could take part, aid officials explained. "The slow implementation of the programme and resource transfers to beneficiaries has resulted in unmet needs and a deteriorating humanitarian situation marked by high malnutrition levels," Annan said. "The continued high prices of food could strain the already low purchasing power of the chronically food-insecure population," he cautioned. "Urgent action is required to address the implications of the delay in the programme." Annan’s report on the Ethiopia-Eritrea border situation detailed the current humanitarian situation in both countries. Donors from the US, the World Bank, the UK and the European Union met with the Ethiopia’s deputy Prime Minister Adissu Legesse on Monday to raise their concerns. "We have had problems," Mulugeta Debalkew, spokesman for the ministry of agriculture, which is in charge of the safety-nets programme, said. "We have no experience with this scheme because it is new to us." He attributed initial delays to donors, who were slow to provide resources. By mid-March, cash and food were being supplied. Debalkew said electioneering in April and May could further delay transfers, and indicated that local officials have been unable to meet "complex and stringent" reporting requirements imposed by donors. Regional authorities, he added, had also faced problems in working out the numbers of beneficiaries to be targeted under the scheme. In Amhara region, an extra one million people should be included, while countrywide the number of people in need may reach eight million. "In targeting, there have been problems," he said. "We have already agreed with the donor community to revise some of the targeting mechanisms, and the donors are interested in increasing the numbers of beneficiaries from five million to eight or seven million." Evaluations of the scheme also have found that local banks ran out of money, meaning families could not be paid for their work. The delays have prompted donors and government to agree to hand out a one-off, three-month, lump-sum cash payment to families regardless of whether they have carried out work to stave off increasing malnutrition. The UN’s World Food Programme has started providing supplementary food in some areas covered by the initiative where high malnutrition levels have occurred. The safety-nets initiative ranks as one of the largest aid programmes in Ethiopia and is funded by foreign donors at about US $200 million a year. Almost half of Ethiopia’s 520 woredas [districts] were included in the scheme. To benefit, people must carry out public works, for which they are paid in food or cash – around six Ethiopian birr ($0.70) per day. The programme is designed to complement Ethiopia’s emergency aid schemes for people in need of food due to poor harvests this year. "The safety net will protect the assets of chronically food-insecure families, enhance the functioning of food markets and support urgent rural investments," G8 leaders stated when they met last year. "Within three to five years, this safety net should provide an alternative to emergency assistance for the Ethiopians who are chronically food insecure." Annan also highlighted "deteriorating food security situation" in parts of the country, citing a significant rise in acute malnutrition. He added that funding for areas like health, water and agriculture was "urgently needed", observing that the "food first" culture had continued to dominate funding trends.