Milk powder for Timor refugees

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 34021, 10 December 1975, Page 6

Milk powder for Timor refugees

A shipment of New Zealand milk powder, supplied by the New Zealand Red Cross Society. is on its way to Timor refugee camps, which are jammed with 35,00(1 hungry refugees, says a news release from the society. A string of 18 refugee camps has been set up over the Timor and Indonesia border. Food is desperately short, both in the war-damaged cities and in the refugee camps, and when the New Zealand Red Cross received an urgent appeal for help, it immediately arranged for the consignment of milk powder. The shipment is part of $BOOO in aid given by the New Zealand Red Cross to Timor in the last few weeks ito help the civilians who have

ifled from fighting between I rival factions. “Thousands who fled from I the cities to the hills when ■ the fighting began are now ■ starting to drift back into the ■ towns, but there is a critical food shortage. Our milk powder is urgently needed,” says Mr J. W. Talbot, secretarygeneral of the society. To get the relief to Timor as quickly as possible the Red Cross arranged to buy ! the milk powder from the I New Zealand Dairy Board’s I stocks in Singapore. “We have been asked if we can give more help to Timor ; and also to Angola, where I civilians caught up in the 'political unrest and fighting are suffering. However, our • funds are limited,” says Mr ; Talbot. “The unrest and the ' problems in Timor, Angola and Lebanon have made big demands on the relief rei sources of the International ißed Cross.* 8 __ .