Agency supplies additional food to Borno IDPs

The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) says it has supplied additional food to Borno Government to tackle food shortage at the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps in the state.

NEMA North East Information Officer Ibrahim Abdulkadir stated this in a statement issued on Sunday in Maiduguri.

Abdulkadir said that the items were presented to the state government by NEMA Zonal Coordinator, Mallam Muhamad Kanar in Maiduguri.

``NEMA has presented additional food items to the Borno Government for the feeding of IDPs in the state.

``The food items comprising 2,000 bags of rice, 1,000 bags of millet and 1,000 bags of guinea-corn were presented in Maiduguri following a request by the state committee on the feeding of IDPs for additional supply,’’ he said.

``The committee and the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) had jointly requested for additional food supply, saying that what we gave them had been exhausted because there were lots of changes.

``The changes arose from the influx of more IDPs to the camps, so they need more from us before the next supply,’’ he said.

Kanar explained that the increased demand was also due to the introduction of dry ratio feeding system by the government in line with international standards.

``The committee and SEMA sent a request for more food supply partly due to influx of new IDPs and also because they had introduced the international standard of dry ratio feeding in some of IDPs camps,’’ he said.

Kanar added that the dry ratio system allowed the IDPs to have the opportunity of cooking their meals themselves, determining what they wanted to eat at any given time.

``This system is unlike the centralised cooking system where IDPs are fed from a centralised kitchen,’’ he said.

Receiving the food items, Malam Ahmed Satome, SEMA Executive Chairman, commended NEMA for the gesture and the quick response just as he promised judicious utilisation of the materials.

``Actually this is an effort made internally by SEMA to ensure that we take proper care of the IDPs feedings.

``We realized that we have problem with the food on ground, so we requested for additional supply from NEMA,’’ Satome said.

Malam Mohammed Idris, the Chairman of the State Monitoring Committee on IDPs feeding, also expressed joy at the development.

Idris gave the assurance that the committee would monitor the distribution of the items to the IDPs.