World Food Programme Almost Cut Food: Central Java, Indonesia

World Food Programme officials said they nearly had to halt emergency food aid to 100 thousand victims of Indonesia's devastating May 27 earthquake because of lack of money from donor nations.

This I couldn’'t understand and after talking to a colleague at the University, in his opinion there was more donated money poured into the relief funds for the quake survivors in Yogyakarta than there was in Aceh after the tsunami.

The UN agency's emergency programmes including distributing high protein biscuits and noodles to victims in central Java, were given a last second lifeline by Saudi Arabia which agreed to give 2 million dollars to keep the operations going.

The Saudi donation came at the end of a five day visit to Indonesia and the earthquake zones this week by a Saudi delegation led by Mohamed Abdul Rahman Al Mugeteeb of the country's finance ministry and Abdul Aziz Arrukban a WFP special ambassador.

Saudi Arabia pledged to give the Indonesian government and several UN agencies 5 million dollars in total for relief and recovery operations from the 6.2 magnitude quake which killed around six thousand people.

Shortly after the disaster the WFP appealed for 5.3 million dollars to feed survivors left homeless by the disaster for six months but donors only came up with 800,000 dollars. The massive shortfall forced the agency to divert money from food support programmes for 2 million Indonesians in other parts of the country and officials were on the verge of halting relief operations to earthquake victims.

An appeal for other nations to pledge the remaining 3.3 million was prompted in order to continue the emergency programme for the entire six month period otherwise the WFP will again be forced to channel money away from other needy Indonesian areas or give out less food.

Indonesia has the world's largest Muslim population and received unprecedented aid from Arab nations following the tsunami and earthquake disasters.