ISLAMABAD: The World Food Program’s executive director James Morris has urged international community to fulfill their pledges and urgently provide about $65 million-$70 million fund to help its airlift to continue providing relief through the harsh winter in quake ravaged areas of Azad Jammu and Kashmir and NWFP.
“We urgently need this amount to fund the air operation until the end of April in an area covering more than 11,000 square miles, We fear a second disaster among the 4.5 million quake affectees left dependent on aid, if the flow of aid slows down then we could think of worse,” he observed this while addressing a crowded press conference here on Saturday.
He said UN agency has enough capacity to keep making aid flights to remote areas through January, but we will need more funds. "We need substantial help, and the helicopters are critical, given the weather, the rugged terrain and our need to pre-position a huge amount of food in places throughout the affected area before the weather gets terrible," Morris added.
He said the worse the conditions become on the ground, the more heavily we will rely on our helicopters. We have never had a crisis where the use of helicopters was so critical." He called it the toughest natural disaster that WFP has had to deal with in its 40 years of operations due to the logistics of reaching remote areas and the onset of the Himalayan winter. Trucks, donkeys, horses and even Himalayan trekkers have been used to reach the most remote areas. "I am confident that we are going to be able to respond to the challenge," Morris underlined.
WFP has 18 helicopters working in the quake area. Morris said that the agency and Pakistan’s government had agreed that WFP should double, to 400,000, the number of people for which it is responsible for providing emergency food in areas reachable only by air. |
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