$7m needed to feed New Guineans

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33092, 6 December 1972, Page 20

$7m needed to feed New Guineans

About s7m will be needed to provide food for 400,000 tribesmen in the Western Highlands of Papua-New Guinea whose existence was threatened by a series of exceptional frosts this winter which wiped out all their crops.

Present supplies of stored food are expected to run out within the next few weeks. New crops will not reach maturity until the middle of next year.

So far, the National Council of Churches has sent $5OOO from its emeregency relief fund, and C.0.R.5.0., $2OOO. It will also dispatch $500.0 of milk biscuits and milk powder. The Government recently gave $50,000. Relief feeding is at present costing $63,000 weekly, or $1 per person each week. In the coming months, the House of Assembly believes that s7m Will be needed for food. “There is no reason to believe that the famine has yet caused any increase in deaths,” says a statement from the World Council of Churches, “but it will take a miracle to prevent this within the coming six months.” Miss P. Gruber, new director of overseas aid for the National Council of Churches, says that much of the cost is created by freight charges imposed to fly the food into the area.

“It only costs $1 to feed one person each week, but it costs 50c to get the food there, the area is so inaccessible,” she said. “Unfortun-

ately, the whole thing has been overshadowed by Hurricane Bebe, but the need is still immense.” The tribesmen have a subsistence economy, and because of their extremely restricted normal diet of sweet potato, cabbage, peas, and pandanus nuts, any substantial variation in the food sent would cause dysentery and could not be eaten in the face of starvation, said the statement.

Within New Guinea, a national appeal has been launched and has so far yielded' $750,000.