Lack of transport starving Sudan

Press, 2 July 1985, Page 12

Lack of transport starving Sudan

NZPA-Reuter Khartoum The United Nations is appealing urgently for funds to unlock bottlenecks in moving food to Africa’s newest famine disaster in west Sudan, where aid workers fear at least 250,000 people, mostly children, will die.

“You will not be able to count the bodies because noone drawing relief rations will admit to losing a family member. The chil-

dren will just be little mounds in the sand,” said Mr Winston Prattley, a New Zealander who is the special representative of the United Nations Secretary-General, Mr Perez de Cuellar.

Pleading for fuel and for cash to buy or hire trucks and improve an inadequate railroad, Mr Prattley told reporters, “The Ethiopian highlands are green now. Sudan is now the nation in great need.”

The threat is greatest in areas of Darfur and Kordofan provinces, up to 1000 km by rail and truck from Port Sudan on the Red Sea. Donors have committed about enough food and drugs to meet Sudan’s needs but the relief cannot be moved to those in need.

Mr Prattley said 250,000 tons of food from the United States and other donors remains on the docks at Port Sudan.

“I am going back to ask (the United Nations) for SUS2O million ($42.6 million) now just to keep the ball rolling. There will have to be a great deal more effort,” Mr Prattley said.

“It cost SUSIBO ($383) a ton to get the stuff away,” the United Nations official said. “The railway is sagging. It will need massive investment to get up enough steam to help.”

On the use of planes, he said, “A few Hercules fluttering around are getting out only a tiny fraction.” Mr Prattley and Sudanese relief officials said the lack of fuel was why the Army, in power since an April 6 coup, was not using its trucks. Sudanese officials said Saudi Arabia and Libya had pledged fuel. Asked why four Libyan Antonov planes

had been idle at Khartoum Airport for more than a week, the Sudanese said they apparently lacked the range to be of use. One task now is to persude people in the affluent West that, as a spokesman of Britain’s Band Aid relief group put it, “logistics are sexy.” Charities find it easier to raise cash for more obvious forms of help such as food, milk, and drugs.