Food crisis spreads in Maluku

JAKARTA (JP): The number of villages facing food shortages in Southeast Maluku increased from the reported 130 last week -- affecting 81,845 people -- to 149 villages, Antara reported yesterday.

The news agency quoted Poli Davids, an official at the local social services office, as saying yesterday that 149 out of 424 villages and subdistricts in the regency had been reported to be facing food shortages due to the long drought.

The ministry of social services had since November distributed 11.25 tons of rice for the 16,241 families or 81,845 people in the 130 villages in seven of the eight districts in the regency.

Aru district is one of the areas unaffected by the drought, as it had a large stock of sago which the local people had been processing into various kinds of food to replace rice.

Poli said the ministry's rice stock in the logistic depots in Tual, the capital of Southeast Maluku, had all been used up.

"We are really grateful because the provincial office of the Ministry of Social Services had prepared five tons of rice to be sent to drought-affected areas soon," he said.

Food shortages in the regency have forced thousands of locals to foray for forest fruits and yams to survive. Poli Davids said 491 families, comprising 2,134 people, in eleven villages on Marsela Island, Pulau-pulau Babar district, had been eating biji pauh (a variety of mango found in the forest).

The social services office recently sent 2.6 tons of rice to the district.

The villagers in Leti, Moa and Lakor (Lamola) districts have also been forced to eat ancak (the fruit of a banyan tree), and other forest fruits known locally as koli and kumbili.

An Antara dispatch from Wamena in the famine-stricken Jayawijaya regency in Irian Jaya said that National Police Chief Gen. Dibyo Widodo has sent cash, food and medicine for the local people.

Irian Jaya Police Chief Brig. Gen. Hotman Siagian delivered the aid to Jayawijaya Regent J.B. Wenas yesterday at the disaster relief operation command post.

"This assistance is an expression of the police chief's concern for the people in the disaster-stricken area," said Siagian when handing over the Rp 3 million (US$600), one ton of food stuff, and 500 kilograms of medicine.

Drought-related diseases such as diarrhea and malaria have claimed 657 lives, as reported by the media, in four regencies in Irian Jaya while food shortages there are threatening 150,000 other people, officials have said. (swe)