WFP to feed 2.1 million Indonesians

WFP to feed 2.1 million Indonesians

Agence France-Presse, Jakarta

The United Nations food agency on Monday launched a program to
feed 2.1 million of the poorest Indonesians, including hundreds
of thousands of people displaced by sectarian and separatist
violence.

The operation by the World Food Program (WFP) will cost US$65
million and run until the end of 2003, the organization said.

The program is aimed at 2.1 million Indonesians who face the
highest risk of hunger and malnutrition because of the rising
costs of food and other commodities, the WFP said in a statement.

The relief operation will enable the 1.5 million urban poor to
buy subsidized rice at a fraction of the normal price.

WFP will also give rice to 300,000 internally displaced people
throughout the archipelago as well as blended food, a vital
nutritional supplement, to children aged under two years and
their mothers.

"The operation is designed to solve at least one problem for
these people -- getting just enough to eat -- so they can grapple
more effectively with serious setbacks of poverty, unemployment
and poor health," said WFP country director Mohamed Saleheen in
the statement.

"We know, for example, that in the four major cities where we
work, half of the children under five years of age are stunted
and 30 percent are underweight.

"This is the result of acute and widespread malnutrition and
we need to short-circuit it now so that it is not passed on to
the next generation," Saleheen said.

He said unskilled urban laborers in Indonesia earned half what
they did before the regional crisis struck in mid-1997 and
crippled the economy.

In addition, Saleheen said, many in WFP's target group had no
access to government social safety nets because they were illegal
settlers.

A recent WFP study showed the number of poor people among the
internally displaced Indonesians was about three times higher
than the overall average of 19 percent at district level.

"The IDP (internally displaced people) wave has risen in just
the last three years," said Saleheen. "That means that we still
have an opportunity to fix these problems before they harden into
a second generation."

Indonesia was beset by sectarian and separatist unrests
following the end of the 32-year autocratic rule of Soeharto in
May 1998. An estimated 1.3 million people are internal refugees.