Govt to build food barns in famine prone areas

Nethy Dharma Somba, The Jakarta Post, Wamena

Learning from the famine calamity in Yahukimo regency, Papua province, the central government will soon build food barns in several locations prone to famine, a local government official said on Tuesday.

The central government would also deploy researchers and agricultural experts in order to study whether soil in the regency was fit for crops other than sweet potato, which is the staple food of the Yahukimo people, said Yahukimo deputy regent Daniel Rendeng. The steps were being taken in order to prevent famine from happening again, said the official in Wamena, the closest city to Yahukimo regency.

According to the plan drawn up by the central government, food stores including rice and sweet potato would be stored in the barns to anticipate harvest failure. The food diversification program was also important so that people were not dependent solely on sweet potato.

The famine hit the area after a sweet potato harvest failure this year. At least 55 people have reportedly died of starvation while 112 have become critically ill. The case attracted national attention after Yahukimo regent Ones Pahebol last week alerted the national media to the plight of his people. Upon seeing the story in the media, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono instructed government officials to dispatch food aid and medicine to the famine stricken areas, but the relief efforts had been hampered by bad weather, and until Monday only a small portion of the aid had reached the regency.

An Army helicopter dropped aid on Tuesday in four location hit by famine, with each spot receiving 450 kilograms of food.

Sister Sue Triner, a church missionary who has been living for years in Papua and recently visited Yahukimo, said the food aid helped save the lives of residents in the famine-affected area.

If the food aid had not been dropped into the area, the starvation would have been much more severe and would have cost more lives, she said.

Yahukimo regency is some 800 kilometers from Jayapura, the capital of Papua province, and can only be reached by air. The region is mostly mountainous and has a wet tropical climate. It extends across some 98,693 square kilometers and is inhabited by 55,000 people, according to the most recent census.

Separately, as food aid began flowing into Yahukimo regency, the South Sulawesi provincial government promised on Monday night that it would send five tons of rice into the famine affected area.

A Papua opposition leader earlier blamed the government for the famine, saying the disaster was a result of the government's ignorance about its people. Huge amounts of money under the special autonomy program had been channeled to local governments but a major part of it had gone into the coffers of officials and not to the people, said Fadel Al Hamid, the secretary of the Papuan Custom Council (DAP).