NEWS: Govt in dilemma as food shortage bites

Govt in dilemma as food shortage bites

Sunday, May 10, 2009 from MONITOR ONLINE

First came the expert’s warning about an unpredictable weather pattern. Then talk of looming famine followed by government assurances it had capacity to salvage the vulnerable from starvation.

Now, with reports of people dying of hunger in the countryside, officials in Kampala appear oddly caught off guard again.

They are in a panic mode, struggling to raise cash to buy food to assuage the battering effects of famine it knew, in time, was coming following sudden dry spells and failed crop yields in various parts of the country.

State Disaster Preparedness Minister Musa Ecweru said yesterday the Treasury has agreed to release only Shs1.9 billion out of Shs10 billion they requested to buy emergency food to feed the “most vulnerable.”

It remained unclear if individuals in hard-hit West Nile, Karamoja, Teso sub-regions as well as areas in the Mt. Elgon belt, who in official judgment do not appear helpless, would be left to suffer --- and die.

Karimojong women enjoy malwa, a local beer in Masese III Village, Jinja District recently. Karimojong women and children scavenge for food from garbage skips in Jinja Town.

The minister also offered no yardstick to determine the most vulnerable in an agonising situation where all clamour for food relief.

“We are going to buy food to help the most vulnerable people and liaise with the Ministry of Agriculture to ensure that high and quick-yielding crop varieties are supplied for urgent planting in areas where rains have returned,” Mr Ecweru said yesterday, apparently reciting an overworked but unfulfilled official promise.

Farmers in the affected areas, he said, will be given cow peas seeds to plant alongside a sweet potatoes variety that matures within 85 days.

Three months is too long for people unable to put food on their table today to bear. Worse still, there is no guarantee the rains falling in some selected parts will continue predictably, something raising anger among frustrated victims now accusing government of neglecting them in their hour of need.

In the West Nile District of Moyo, where many people now survive on raw mangoes, the District Naads coordinator, Dr Thomas Anyanzo, said on Saturday that over the last three months, prices of most staples in the area increased by at least Shs500.

This is making it hard for struggling households to put food on the table.“Our worry is that the mango season is running out and what next for the people, no one knows!” he said.

Mr Hassan Fungaro, the MP for Obongi in Moyo District said yesterday that he personally approached Disaster Preparedness Minister, Prof. Tarsis Kabwegyere to voice the desperation of his constituents but his plea for government food aid has been ignored.

“I don’t know why the government is treating its own citizens this way,” he said.

Daily Monitor was unable to reach Prof. Kabwegyere to respond to the allegations as his known cell phone was switched off.Ms Kabakumba Masiko, the information minister, however, said much of the criticism smells of “selfish political motives.”

“The government is not sidelining anyone. People should know that we run on a cash budget and can only act as and when the money is available,” she said last evening.

Ms Kabakumba said Finance will have to follow lengthy but mandatory procedures before making the cash available.

Then suppliers have to be sourced through an open bidding process with clearance by the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets, the government contract monitoring authority.

“I cannot say when government will actually start buying the emergency food stock,” she said. Yet there is no explanation why the country does not have food reserves in the first place.

Instead Prime Minister Apolo Nsibambi is asking donors to contribute $69, 300 (Shs211 million) to feed more than 1 million Karimojong for the next five months.

That should leave other affected areas even more worried. Interestingly, government has not navigated a fall back position should the development partners shun the appeal due to the devastating financial meltdown.