Last week, Shree Bahadur Gurung, a local in hard-hit Gorkha district, uploaded a picture of a sack of rice stamped with the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) logo on his Facebook. The visibly damaged rice was black in parts and reportedly smelt foul. A team including the WFP Emergency Coordinator for Nepal and the Chief District Officer of Gorkha later found that 120 bags of rice out of 485 delivered to Laprak had been damaged. The WFP now claims that it has launched an immediate investigation into the matter and that it “takes food quality and safety extremely seriously and our [WFP’s] stringent food quality standards are in line with the Government of Nepal’s regulations.”  

But its response to the repeated complaints of poor quality of its supplies has hardly been inspiring. For one, the UN body has been reluctant to provide details that would give Nepalis more confidence in its handling of relief supplies—for instance, how it stores the supplies, how they are transported and the time the supplies take to reach quake-affected areas. It could most certainly help by providing the related information to the Disaster Management and Monitoring Committee of Parliament.

A child protection expert told this newspaper (‘Relief should make locals independent, not dependent on charity,’ June 23, Page 6) that exclusive consumption of junk food like noodles and biscuits, which were distributed indiscriminately in quake-affected areas, has resulted in malnutrition in children in some VDCs in Sindhupalchok. Many households now have stockpiles of potato chips, noodles and biscuits to last for as long as six months, and they are far less inclined to work in their farms now. This is a ‘silent disaster’ in the making as it could result in malnutrition in a vast number of adults and children. Further, the dependence on the dole could itself be a little dangerous. Instead of making the villagers self-sufficient by helping them farm a variety of grains and vegetables that can be grown locally, it could create a new dependence cycle on foreign food items.

The government along with community-based organisations and local FM stations should aggressively inform people about the poor nutritional value of much ready-to-eat food (noodles and potato chips, for example). Celebrities—movie actors, comedians, athletes—who have been actively involved in relief distribution should also join hands for this cause. Those who are distributing such food should keep in mind that their act of charity will only harm the aid recipients in the long haul. In the long run, the pending Disaster Management Bill should incorporate a provision on kinds of food that can be distributed during disasters. Knowingly or unknowingly, the hapless cannot be doubly victimised.

Agencies like the WFP (and/or others) could help by distributing seeds in addition to dispatching much-needed food grains to the disaster-affected population. If it intends to distribute saplings/seeds, it should coordinate with the Nepal Agricultural Research Council, which has been researching on grain varieties suitable for Nepal, instead of collaborating with an international agency.