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Zim: UN must hand over food
19/08/2003 11:04 - (SA)
Harare - President Robert Mugabe's regime, accused of withholding food from thousands of starving people in pro-opposition areas, has ordered the United Nations to hand over its famine relief stocks for the state's controversial food distribution operations, reports said here on Tuesday.
The independent Daily News quoted from a state directive saying that aid agencies could deliver grain to famine relief distribution points but that local government officials "will be responsible for the distribution of food".
The World Food Programme, by far the largest distributor of food in the country which plans to feed 5.5 million people in this second year of famine, has a strict policy all over the world that excludes government agencies from distributing UN food, to avoid corruption and abuse of food supplies.
Until now, the regime has agreed with this policy and given the UN a free hand in handing out food aid.
No immediate confirmation was available of the Daily News report.
The paper quoted Luis Clemens, the WFP spokesperson here, as saying: "The WFP has learned of a new government direction concerning relief food distributions, which was announced by a cabinet action committee at meetings held in provincial capitals in the past three days.
"We are reviewing this new directive and seeking clarification."
The government has virtually no food stocks of its own. Last year, aid agencies said that famine relief was widely used as "a political weapon" to force people to support Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party.
The Daily News quoted welfare minister July Moyo as saying: "No international donor can tell us that the government should not be involved in food distribution, when we are the ones who asked for it." - Sapa-DPA
- SAPA
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