Addis Ababa grateful

Press, 15 July 1985, Page 6

Addis Ababa grateful

Ethiopia’s top relief official thanked organisers of the rock concert for African famine relief yesterday but said that thousands of Ethiopians could still die without long-term development aid. Major Dawit Wolde Georgis, head of the Government’s Relief and Rehabilitation Commission, said that he was grateful for the concert in Britain and the United States. “Our message is one of thanks,” he said. “We have saved millions of lives with

emergency relief, but those same lives could be threatened tomorrow or next year without long-term development aid.

“The crisis is not over. We have got to do some-

thing about making us selfsufficient in food. Emergency grain is not enough." Major Dawit said that more than 95 per cent of the aid given to Ethiopia since ’ the crisis began was “emergency relief, life-saving aid.” Ethiopia also needed seeds and basic farming tools such as hoes to help tens of thousands of people who had recently left relief shelters to go home and plant crops during the current rainy season.

Major Dawit said that not one Government had responded to an appeal in April for such items, desperately needed if peasants

were to stop relying on food aid.