to provide food items for flood victims

Accra, July 28, GNA - Mr. Kofi Portuphy, Co-ordinator of National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO), on Wednesday revealed that the Secretariat would need more than GH¢29 million to provide food and non-food items for victims of last June's floods.

He said the organisation would need more resources to provide water and sanitation relief package for the affected communities.

Mr. Portuphy announced this when World Food Programme (WFP) and United Nations Humanitarian Respond Depot (UNHRD) handed over food and non-food relief items valued at 40,000 dollars to victims of the floods at Agona Swedru in the Central Region.

The WFP assistance consists of 831 bags of maize, 135 cartons of cooking oil and 20 bags of iodized salt while UNHRD assisted with 300 pieces of blankets to the worst affected people in the camps.

Mr. Izzeldin Abdalla, Officer in-charge of WFP, said the items would be distributed to 3,300 people residing in camps established by NADMO in Bom Dwen, Town Hall, Nkubem Ahmaddiya School and Presbyterian Salem Community all in Agona Swedru.

He said NADMO would take responsibility of transportation of the items from their office to the community as well as its distribution.

Mr. Martin Walsh, UNHRD Manager, said in response to an assessment by the Inter-Agency Working Group to the worst affected areas, the mission decided to mobilise support for NADMO.

He said the team observed that several houses and business premises had either collapsed or had been submerged rendering thousands homeless adding, some communities had been marooned following the collapse of bridges while several acres of farmland had been inundated, destroying farm produce, hence the drive to help the affected victims.

UNHRD is a WFP network able to deliver humanitarian relief items world-wide within 24 and 28 hours.

It provides storage, logistics support and services to the UN, international and other humanitarian agencies, thus reinforcing capacity for humanitarian emergency response.

WFP is also the world's largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger.

In Ghana, 422,000 people would be beneficiaries of food assistance this year through supplementary feeding, school feeding and relief operations.