Gov't reallocates hunger funds

The Burundian government has decided to use US $10 million initially intended to contain food shortages in northern and eastern provinces to fund other needy sectors, a government official said on Tuesday. "The food situation is improving now that people have started harvesting crops for the current farming season," Pierre-Claver Rurakamvye, the permanent secretary of the National Commission for the Coordination of Aid, said. "We are going to focus on the health and education sectors." In February, President Pierre Nkurunziza declared the northern provinces of Kirundo and Muyinga and the eastern provinces of Rutana, Ruyigi and Rutana "famine-stricken". He also directed civil servants, business people and the public in general to contribute funds to a national hunger kitty. Apart from government aid, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has so far distributed 40,000 tonnes of food in these provinces, Guillaume Foliot, the programme officer at WFP in Burundi, said. "The peak demand was in May when 9,000 tonnes were distributed to 900,000 people, that is 10 percent of the country's total population," Foliot said. WFP, he added, had spent at least $25 million on food and distribution in the past six months. Gérard Madodo, an official in the food security emergency unit of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said mechanisms had been put in place to check the effects of hunger in the future, with FAO distributing seeds to 450,000 households in the northern area of Bugesera and the lowlands of Imbo and Moso. He said the heavy rains from mid-April to mid-May had destroyed beans, but the "damage cannot be compared to that of last year". "Other crops such as yams, potatoes and sweet potatoes, and banana plantations were not as affected by the heavy rains," Madodo added. A donor conference was held in Bujumbura on 28 February where some $170 million was pledged for the 2006 emergency.