WFP won't increase relief in Kenya

BY CATHERINE KARONG'O

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null 1/1 NAIROBI, Kenya, Jun 2 - The World Food Program (WFP) said it was unlikely to scale up its food aid operations in Kenya even after the government declared drought a national disaster on Monday. Programme Officer Bernard Nyatuga said on Wednesday that changing their operations was dependent on assessments that define the geographical areas where humanitarian assistance was required and the number of beneficiaries. He said currently they were supporting 1.7 million people in the Arid and Semi arid areas of the country and this was informed by an assessment done between January and February this year which identified 2.4 million Kenyans as requiring food assistance. The assessment, he said, is done by the Kenya Food Security Steering Group. “When we talk about the 1.7 million people, we normally support them with different food varieties that comprise the food basket. We have ration scales that determine how much people are given. We need about 15,000 metric tonnes of cereals for these people per month,” Mr Nyatuga said. Mr Nyatuga explained that when a national disaster is declared, it showed that food security had reached a point where indicators like availability and access of food (physical presence of food within areas where the emergency has been declared) had gone beyond the acceptable threshold. “This is also to elicit a call from humanitarian community that support is required to ensure people have access to food and other humanitarian supplies,” he said. “However it may not necessarily see more donor communities assisting in food aid but will base their support on the indicators they feel are acceptable within their domain,” he added. He said they were currently exploring options of sourcing cereals from other countries in the region because of challenges in local procurement of cereals which began towards the end of last year. “Towards the end of last year, WFP floated tenders to suppliers who were to supply cereals but a number of them defaulted and this led to a pipeline break meaning that the food we would project to be able to support people within a given period was not predictable,” he stated. After negotiating with the government, the agency bought 18,000 metric tonnes of cereals from the National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB) last month, which is only one months supply, he said. “WFP has been challenged of bringing food within the country where there is availability and we strived to convince majority of the donors to give cash so that we could procure locally,” he said. “But currently NCPB doesn’t have commercial stock,” he said. At the same time, WFP said the continuous escalation of refugees in camps posed a major challenge in its relief operations within the camps. Programme Officer Refugee Unit Felix Okech said they were currently giving food to 350,000 refugees in Dadaab and another 17, 000 in Kakuma camp but the numbers increased especially when there was renewed tension in Somalia and Sudan. He said balancing their relief operations between the refugees and host communities was another challenge they were trying to address. “One thing that we always try to do is to have a three month buffer stock in the camps but this doesn’t mean that we always have it, it depends on the availability of funding,” Mr Okech said. He said they spend about Sh560 million every month to give food aid to refugees in the country. Follow us on TWITTER @Capitalfm_Kenya

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