World Food Program Donates US$ 98 Million to Indonesia

Tuesday, 25 March, 2008 | 15:31 WIB

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta: Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare, Aburizal Bakrie, and the World Food Program (WFP) signed a Memorandum of Understanding for food assistance yesterday. The agreement is aimed to help and rehabilitate the nutrition in Indonesia by extending the assistance and restoration program.

The agreement will be ongoing for three years until December 2010 with total funding of US$ 98 million, including US$ 56 million for food and US$ 42 million for operational costs.

The funding will be to improve nutrition for ages 24-60 months; pregnant women; breast-feeding mothers, and children aged 6-13 years old, and provide additional food for tuberculosis patients and poor families. The funding is also aimed at and sanitation and government assistance for natural disasters. “There is total of 845 million people that will benefit from this program,” said Aburizal, accompanied by WFP Director for Indonesia, Angela van Rynbach.

The effort to overcome starvation and malnutrition is one phase to achieve the Millenium Development Goals (MDG's). “Sufficient food is important to alleviate poverty,” he said.

The food commodities will be distributed to three provinces of West Nusa Tenggara, East Nusa Tenggara, and East Java. The commodities contain rice (58,432 tons), cooking oil (2,484 tons), biscuits (15,524 tons), instant noodles (6,764 tons), and wheat (42,137 tons).

The first phase of the program that goes through March, has been focused on malnutrition prevention, food rehabilitation for pregnant and breast-feeding women, recovery for TB patients, sufficient food in poor areas, and capacity building for related institutions.

REH ATEMALEM SUSANTI