Local aid organizations are cutting food programs countrywide in response to the World Food Program’s shift in support from basic food donations to development programs, NGO representatives said last week.
The WFP will stop providing more than 150 partners with approximately 40,000 metric tons of rice, vegetable oil, canned fish and a blend of corn and soy beginning this month and will end its “phase-out” program in June, WFP Country Director Rebecca Hansen said Friday.
To deal with an shrinking worldwide budget, which fell from $995 million in 1991 to $203 million in 2002, the WFP is now focusing on education, health and nutrition, and disaster mitigation, Hansen said.
The WFP’s new budget will fund, among other activities, a school-feeding program, vocational and life-skills training for disadvantaged women, and a home-based care program for people living with AIDS, Hansen said.
Although the WFP partners were warned of their donor’s strategic plan to reduce funds earlier this year, many are just beginning to feel the effects of the priority change.
Minister of Women’s Affairs Mu Sochua said she did not yet know how she will replace the food that the WFP provides for the 1,000 women in government support centers.
“I don’t understand why it’s not a priority for [the WFP],” Mu Sochua said Sunday.
“We are now forced to ask women to provide their own food,” she added.
WFP food donations account for approximately 30 percent of the provisions used to serve about 1,600 meals a day at Friends/Mith Samlanh, director Sebastian Marot said Thursday.
Marot said that the youth vocational training center and shelter has had to stretch its food budget, and the organization now is faced with a $15,000 to $20,000 increase in food expenditures a year.
Sharon Wilkinson, CARE’s country director, said she was not surprised by WFP’s policy shift and encouraged the government to look more toward development projects than basic donations.
