Bam emergency food distribution proceeding well

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has launched a programme to provide food supplies to the people of Bam for an initial period of three months with the Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS) as their implementing partner. The southeastern Iranian city, devastated by an earthquake on 26 December, has been divided into 12 zones, An IRCS official in the central zone told IRIN that they had no problems with food distribution and they were busy sending supplies into sub-zones to be further distributed by community leaders. They were said to be going tent-to-tent to provide people with needed food items and other assistance. Survivors like Maryam and her children have received some food supplies, but they don't have bread, an essential part of their daily diet. "Although we have been given some canned food, we haven't seen bread for a week," she told IRIN. Another angry resident told IRIN the food and non-food items they had been provided with were of poor quality. "We hear that a lot of things from all over the world are coming to Bam, but what we are provided with is only low-quality, Iranian-made goods. Where is all the good stuff going?" she asked IRIN. A UN official told IRIN that food hadn't been an issue until now, adding that food rations were being distributed to families. "I think that this has been done pretty well so far," Adbuld Haq Amiri, head of the UN Coordination Centre, said. According to a UN recent report, some 100,000 food rations have been distributed so far and there are three mobile bakeries with a daily total of 1.2 mt baking capacity and three permanent bakeries with 3.2 mt baking capacity. Also, 30 mt of bread baked in Kerman is distributed on a daily basis to the affected population of the blighted city. However, there have been reports that some people were getting more, while some were getting very little. "We are concerned about such reports, but it is not very wide scaled. Secondly, let's not forget that the scope of the emergency was huge," Amiri said. "I also heard that in villages, some parts of the villages have received [their rations], some parts may have not received. Some have received more, some have received less, but the important thing is that most people have received something to eat," he explained. Meanwhile, Marius de Gaay Fortman, WFP representative in Iran, told IRIN that the situation with regard to food remained positive. "The food situation is pretty good, the IRCS has registered beneficiaries. My last information is about 70,000 people, but registration is still continuing," he said. The WFP official also said that people were now receiving their rations based on their rations cards. Concurring, Amiri noted that people were issued ration cards to ensure that everyone received adequate and proper amount of food items in an effort to avoid irregularities. "We are of course very lucky with an implementing partner like the IRCS," Fortman maintained, adding that WFP started working with them about 40 years ago in the first earthquake WFP assisted in - Booin-Zahra, 150 km west of Tehran - providing some 1,500 mt of wheat flour and 27 mt of tea, which was a donation from India. India was the first donor country to address the food needs of the people of Bam, this time donating some 600 mt of high-energy biscuits as an in-kind donation, most of which has already been distributed among the estimated 100,000 homeless and destitute people of the city.