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Tsunami: 2 million people could face food shortages

     Washington: An assessment by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), has found that due to the destructive tsunami wave, which hit Asian countries recently, around 2 million people in 12 countries could face food shortages. They said that this is because many people are unable to buy food because they have lost their income and livelihoods. And local food production also took a hit when boats and fisheries were destroyed and agricultural land flooded, reports Nature. Their report said that international aid should be directed towards these areas as this could help achieve long term goals. Such assistance might involve replacing fishing equipment and boats, draining blocked irrigation systems and fields, and supplying seed. According to the report, Aceh province in northern Sumatra, has lost around 70 percent of its canoe-based fishing fleet as well as its ponds and hatcheries for crabs, shrimp and fish. Loss of rice crops, which are the staple food for all countries in the region, will also have an impact, according to the second report2. In Indonesia and Sri Lanka, for example, the main paddy crop had been planted just before the tsunami struck. The report, however, says that there is enough surplus food in the region, from affected or neighbouring countries, to cover immediate needs. The main problem will be lack of good transportation to distribute the food.

WFP sends emergency food despatch to Indonesia from Bangladesh (Go To Top)
by Nazrul Islam

     Dhaka: The World Food Programme has sent an emergency despatch of food-aid to Indonesia from Bangladesh to help the people, hit by the Asian tsunami in the devastated island province of Aceh. A cargo aircraft of the US military, C-17, landed at the Zia International Airport on Thursday noontime and left for Medan, Indonesia, carrying the consignment of 400 tonnes of high-energy biscuits, made in Bangladesh. The food-aid, worth roughly about 27,000 dollars, would be distributed among the worst affected people in Banda Aceh, said the WFP Representative in Dhaka, Douglas Casson Coutts at a press briefing here. "These ready-to-eat biscuits that we used in our immediate flood relief operation here in Bangladesh last July, are ideal for disasters that result in disruption of water supplies and other infrastructure," said Douglas thanking the governments of Bangladesh and the US for supporting the effort to despatch the relief quickly. He further added that a similar consignment of food-aid of 300 tonnes would be shipped off to Colombo, Sri Lanka, from the southern port of Chittagong on Friday. The deputy chief of US mission in Dhaka, Judy Chammas who had been in Sri Lanka on December 26 and experienced the devastation unleashed by the tsunami, first hand also attended the briefing. She assured the US government's continuous support in healing the damage from the earthquake triggered tsunami that left behind a swathe of death and destruction across South and South East Asia. The WFP has provided 9,744 tonnes of emergency food-aids among 1,069,000 tsunami victims as of Thursday.

Alcatel donates Rs. 20.5 mln for tsunami relief (Go To Top)

     New Delhi/ Mahasamund: French telecom giant Alcatel has donated 20.5 million rupees for relief and rehabilitation of survivors of tsunami strike that ravaged South and Southeast Asia. Senior officials from the company handed over the cheque for the Prime Minister's relief fund to Union IT and Telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran in New Delhi on Thursday. Meanwhile, relief has been pouring forth from all across the country. While in Gujarat, children have polished shoes and even beggars donated money, in Orissa students performed streets plays to help the relief effort. In the latest efforts, Chhattisgarh has rushed over a million bamboo sticks to help build homes for the survivors, across Tamil Nadu and Andaman and Nicobar islands. Relief workers are racing to build waterproof homes for more than 40,000 homeless tsunami survivors in the region before the annual monsoon hits in April. However, they say they still have no final plan on how to do this. Authorities are working on a plan, consulting housing experts. Options include prefabricated fibreglass shelters or giving islanders free bamboo, timber and tin sheets to rebuild. "Today in the sequence of providing assistance, there was a demand for the rehabilitation word. We had decided to rehabilitate two villages and we will spend two crore rupees. And besides this we are sending 1,00,000 bamboo and 30,000 staffs," state Chattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh in Mahasamund, while flagging off trains Presently, most of the refugees are living in flimsy plastic tents in relief camps across the remote isles.