Aid agencies warned on Tuesday that they do not have money to feed millions of Kenyans suffering from food shortages.
The warning came a day after Information and Communications Minister Mutahi Kagwe announced that the number of Kenyans at risk from the food crisis has increased to 3,5-million from 2,5-million.
”These new figures show how bad this crisis is becoming,” said Paul Smith-Lomas, regional director for the international aid agency, Oxfam. ”The situation is worse than it has been for many years and the hardest months are still ahead of us.”
The number of districts affected by drought is expected to rise to 37 from 17, just over half of Kenya’s 70 districts, said Oxfam Country Representative Gezahegn Kebede.
Aid agencies do not have money to buy food from districts with surplus harvests to feed those hit by the food shortages, said Peter Smerdon, spokesperson of the World Food Programme.
”WFP is short of $44-million now to feed 1,1-million people because of the drought,” Smerdon said. ”Without new donations, WFP will run out of food to distribute in drought affected areas by the end of February.”
”Our previous warnings and appeals have sadly received little response from the donors. What is a very limited window of opportunity to avert mass suffering in Kenya is closing very fast,” he said.
”We don’t want Kenya to become another Niger, where in 2005 donation only increased when people started dying after months of appeals for contributions to prevent deaths.”
The crisis hit as Kenya forecast a surplus harvest of 62 500 metric tonnes of maize. Farmers in other parts of the country were waiting in lines for up to two weeks to sell surplus maize, the nation’s staple food, to the national cereal and produce board.
Surplus food in the West of Kenya is being exported abroad rather than diverted to those at risk from the food crisis.
President Mwai Kibaki’s administration has been accused by lawmakers, citizens and the media of failing to respond effectively to the worsening situation in Kenya’s drought-stricken north.
They say the government had adequate warning of the problem but seemed to respond only after newspaper and television images over the December holiday season moved the public to raise money and food for the affected people.
The government’s response, however, has been ineffective because of the lack of efficient structures for distribution and monitoring, according to Oxfam.
In some places aid has been distributed simply by throwing it off the back of trucks, Oxfam said.
Government spokesperson Alfred Mutua declined to comment on the criticism.
A survey of four districts in the northeastern Wajir by the Merlin aid group has found that hundreds of children are not accessing food distribution. The same survey found that 27% of children were malnourished when 15% constitutes emergency levels, according to Oxfam.
Admissions of children to Wajir therapeutic feeding centre is now more than triple the level it was in October. An average of one child a week dies in this centre alone, according to Oxfam.
Wajir is one of the areas hardest hit by food shortages. British Secretary of State for International Development Hilary Benn visited the area on Tuesday to assess the impact of the crisis.
Officials have described Kenya’s latest drought as the worst in 22 years.
The head of the United Nations environment agency linked the drought to environmental damage to forests, grasslands, wetlands and other critical ecosystems as well as global climate change. – Sapa-AP