Kenyan Government Appeals for Aid

NAIROBI - Dec 19/05 - IRIN -- The Kenyan government has appealed for urgent food aid, saying hundreds of thousands of people in arid and semi-arid areas in the east and northeast will go hungry because the short rains have failed.

"We need support from NGOs, the international community and private companies," John Munyes, special programs minister, said on Sunday. "We are not going to let anyone die of hunger."

Munyes said the districts worst hit by food shortages included Garissa, Mandera and Wajir in Northeastern Province; Marsabit and Mwingi in Eastern Province; Laikipia in central Kenya; Tana River in Coast Province and Samburu and Turkana in the Rift Valley.

The government was distributing maize, beans, cooking oil and milk powder in the affected areas, he added.

On Friday, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) warned that the number of people in need of food in Kenya was expected to rise to 2.5 million in the first half of 2006 because the October-December short rains had failed in many eastern and northern districts.

Some 1.1 million Kenyans are currently receiving general food aid distributions, according to WFP.

Last week, members of parliament from Northeastern Province said that livestock in the region, which is inhabited by pastoralists, were dying because of dwindling pasture and lack of water.

"We are sounding the alarm now because of what the early warning indicators are all showing - a rapidly deteriorating situation. We need immediate action to avoid the loss of people's assets and their lives," Tesema Negash, WFP country director for Kenya, said in a statement.

"Until our field assessments are completed in January, we won't know exactly how many more people will require emergency food aid, but in areas suffering from successive droughts, food security is already critical," he added.

Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2005

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Copyright (c) 2005 UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs