UNRRA SUPPLIES

Greymouth Evening Star, 7 August 1946, Page 7

UNRRA SUPPLIES

RECEIVING NATIONS APPEAL FOR CONTINUANCE

FOOD CRISIS NOT ENDED LONDON, August 6. “Poland, leading other receiving nations, is appealing for the continuation of UNRRA supplies beyond 1946,’’ says Reuter’s Geneva correspondent, who gives the text of a Polish statement circulated to delegates to the international council of UNRRA, meeting in Geneva. The Polish statement says: “If UNRRA supplies or some similar system of relief is discontinued, the people of Poland will be in a worse position in 1947 than at present. Poland is expecting a maximum anticipated deficit of more than £43,000,000, with its people on a diet of 1800 calories a day.” The statement, notes that credit facilities for consumer goods for Poland are not available from the International Bank of Reconstruction. .“The consequences would be extremely serious if the functions of UNRRA were not transferred to other organisations when UNRRA is wound up on December 31,” says the Director-General of UNRRA (Mr. F. H, La Guardia) reporting to the UNRRA Council. “All UNRRA’S work of the last two years would be undone. The collection of the 1946 harvest does not mean the end of the food crisis.” There was no room for relaxation of the most strenuous efforts to ensure that the maximum use was made of all available supplies of grain in order that 1947 should not hold the grimmest threat of starvation. Mr. ‘La Guardia added that hundreds' of thousands of displaced persons would remain in alien lands after the end of the year, while UNRRA would not have achieved the task of bringing conditions of life in the devastated territories back to the minimum level of adequacy.