Afghanistan leadership offers ‘food for work’ programme
THE Afghan Taliban leadership has decided to expand its programme, which offers food for work.
According to Indo-Asian News Service (IANS), wheat was used to pay thousands of workers.
Afghanistan’s economic and humanitarian crisis has been worsening since the Taliban took control in August. This prompted the international community to seize all aid to the country where 80% of the economy comprised foreign aid.
“From the healthcare sector to the basic necessities of life, Afghanistan is sinking into a severe humanitarian crisis with every passing day,” it reported.
Since the Taliban takeover, international donors have frozen their aid to the country, while the banking sector remained in crisis – with no one able to send or receive any remittance from outside of Afghanistan.
While there have been some humanitarian supplies from countries, it has
not been enough to prevent millions of Afghans from starving. Wheat supplies to Afghanistan have mainly come from
India during the previous US-backed governments in Afghanistan. This is now being used to pay around 40 000 workers, who get 10kg of wheat as wage for their day-long work. The programme initially catered to labourers working in the capital, Kabul. However, it will be expanded around the country.
Fazel Bari Fazli, the deputy minister for administration and finance at Afghanistanls Ministry of Agriculture, said: “We have already taken delivery of 18 tons of wheat from Pakistan with a promise of another 37 tons.
“We are in talks with India over 55 tons more.”
According to news.un.org, the UN together with its partners, launched a nearly $5 billion (R77bn) funding appeal last week. The UN said, this was due to the humanitarian crisis expected to worsen in Afghanistan this year.
They said the funding would hopefully improve the collapsing basic services in the country, which left 22 million in need of assistance inside the country, and 5.7 million people requiring help beyond its borders.
It would help aid agencies ramp up the delivery of food and agriculture support, health services, malnutrition treatment, emergency shelters, access to water and sanitation, protection and education, said the UN.
Martin Griffiths, the UN Emergency Relief Co-ordinator, who was speaking at the launch in Geneva, Switzerland, recently said that $4.4bn was needed for the Afghanistan Humanitarian Response Plan alone. He said this was to pay directly to health workers and others, not the de facto authorities.
Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said there was also a call for $623m, to support refugees and host communities in five neighbouring countries, for the Afghanistan Situation Regional Refugee Response Plan.
“Today we are launching an appeal for $4.4bn for Afghanistan itself for 2022. This is the largest ever appeal for a single country for humanitarian assistance and it is three times the amount needed, and actually fundraised in 2021,” said Griffiths.
The UN officials said that the scale of need was enormous and that if insufficient action was taken now to support the Afghanistan and regional response plans, they would be asking $10bn in the next year.
“This is a stop-gap, an absolutely essential stop-gap measure that we are putting in front of the international community today.
“Without this being funded, there won’t be a future.
“We need this to be done, otherwise there will be an outflow, there will be suffering.”
Griffiths said that should sufficient support not be forthcoming, he was particularly concerned for one million children now facing severe acute malnutrition.
“A million children … figures so hard to grasp when they’re this kind of size, but a million children at risk of that kind of malnutrition if these things don’t happen, is a shocking one.”