Friday, September 02, 2005

Food Aid blocked

LINK

President Robert Mugabe blocked a $30m (£17m) emergency relief appeal for the victims of his controversial "clean-up" campaign, as the UN warned that people in his country's southern region were foraging for food in the wild.

The World Food Programme yesterday warned that a sharp increase in grain prices had left the UN agency short of the funds it needed to feed millions of hungry people in the area. "We need food and cash now," Mike Sackett, the WFP regional director for southern Africa, said. "Many who have already eaten their food reserves are surviving on wild foods and relying on other desperate coping strategies.....

But this Angolan paper says othewise: LINK

(the UN Team) said 700 000 people were directly affected by the demolitions, and a further 2.4 million indirectly, figures which the Zimbabwe government disputes.

The Harare authorities say at most 200,000 people were affected by the exercise, and these were now being provided proper housing and trading places under a ZWD3 trillion (ZWD24 000=1USD) funded by the government.

OCHA said the dispute over the figures was the only thing holding up implementation of an agreement between the two sides on the provision of humanitarian relief.

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