More Aceh survivors need food: WFP

Agence France Presse, Jakarta

The number of Indonesian tsunami survivors needing food aid could continue to increase as remote areas of Aceh province become accessible and more needy are found, the World Food Program said on Sunday.

The WFP is now feeding more than 330,000 people but has a target of reaching more than 500,000 by February, spokesman Heather Hill told AFP.

"It's possible that the numbers will go up even more," she said.

"People are very difficult to access... When the roads are restored we'll be finding even more pockets" of people needing aid, she said.

The tsunami leveled many west coast villages and severed road links with communities that survived. WFP was reaching them with helicopters and boats.

Officials told Hill a few days ago that "virtually every day they are getting reports of people who are identified as needing food," she said.

Another WFP spokesman, Inigo Alvarez, said the fact that WFP was not reaching all potential recipients does not mean some were without help. They were getting food from other agencies or from the government, he said.

"I don't think we can say" that some people were not getting food, he said.

WFP is the largest relief agency in Aceh, where about 230,000 people are missing or dead after the December 26 earthquake and tsunami.

"We don't see a problem of malnutrition and, in fact, we see a gradual transition from an emergency to a recovery phase," Alvarez said.

"It has not stabilized yet but is getting there," Hill said.

Getting an accurate count of those receiving aid is difficult because people are often moving, for example from camps to relatives' homes, Alvarez said.

"We're hoping that this flux will stabilize within the next few months so we can concentrate on reaching all the people who need food, particularly on the stretch between Banda Aceh and Meulaboh," Hill said, referring to the key west coast town.

In an interview with AFP last week, the United Nations' top official in Indonesia, Bo Asplund, said he did not believe anybody could be described as desperate for aid.

"I don't believe. My understanding is we have managed to reach most people with some type of relief supplies, even very isolated communities with... helicopter drops and things like that. So to our understanding there is certainly nothing like starvation," he said.