The World Food Programme (WFP) is distributing food to 9,000 families affected by floods in Garissa, Mandera, Tana River, and Turkana counties in coordination with the National Disaster Operations Centre, the Ministry of Devolution and ASALs, and county governments.
This complements other food distributions funded and managed by national and county governments.
With funds from the UN Central Emergency Response Fund, WFP is aiming to support up to 54,000 people who have not yet been reached with assistance from the Government, which says floods affected at least 760,000 people in over 30 counties. About 310,000 people are displaced and more than 240 lost their lives.
WFP is distributing packages containing cereals (sorghum or maize), pulses (split peas or beans) and fortified vegetable oil. It is estimated the food will last families for up to six weeks.
Many parts of Kenya received heavy rains and widespread flooding in April and May, causing rivers to burst their banks and displacing thousands of families, while at the same time local transmission of COVID-19 hampered the supply of food to some districts hit by the floods.
“WFP is complementing ongoing emergency food distributions at the request of national and county governments, which are also having to respond to two other disasters—the COVID-19 pandemic and swarms of desert locusts,” said Calum Gardner, WFP’s Senior Deputy Country Director.
“Our support is aimed at lessening the food and nutrition burden for some of the families whose both property and livelihoods have been destroyed by the floods,” Gardner added.
In addition to providing food to affected families, WFP made available all-terrain six-wheel drive trucks and motorized boats to deliver government food and other supplies to remote villages where roads and bridges were swept away and therefore cannot be reached by normal trucks.
WFP is repacking food into family size packages to allow people to observe social-distancing and reduce contact and the time taken at distribution centres in line with COVID-19 protocols.
