Food shortages are worsening in Zimbabwe and aid agencies are struggling to meet demands for emergency relief supplies, the UN’s food agency said in a statement on Thursday.
The World Food Programme (WFP) said ”food imports by both the government and humanitarian agencies are falling far short of the amount required to feed the Zimbabwean people”.
Some 6,7-million people in the southern African country are threatened with famine due to food shortages.
Aid agencies blame the shortages on a drought and disturbances to commercial agriculture due to a land reform programme.
”WFP does not even have the resources to meet our target of three million beneficiaries in November,” the humanitarian agency’s Zimbabwe representative, Kevin Farrell said in the statement.
”It is an extremely serious situation and it is only going to get worse,” he added.
The shortfall of food between now and March 2003 is close to 200 000 tons, the agency said. The situation was made worse by the Zimbabwe government’s delay in registering the WFP’s food distribution partners.
Desperate families in rural Zimbabwe have resorted to eating poisonous fruit and plant tubers to survive, the statement said. – Sapa-AFP