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Starvation no, food shortage yes: Local official
"Starvation means residents have not been eating for a long time, but the situation is that there is a food shortage because of recent harvest failure
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"Starvation means residents have not been eating for a long time, but the situation is that there is a food shortage because of recent harvest failure. Residents are still eating," regency secretary Roby Lungkutoy told The Jakarta Post on Friday.
The harvest failure has been blamed on plant diseases. "Parasites have appeared on the surface of the tubers that farmers grow, so they couldn't be eaten," he said.
Roby said the local administration sent a team to four districts - Anggruk, Pronggoli, Ubahak and Seredala - where residents were repotedly starving.
The local Indonesian Social Services Christian Foundation (Yakpesmi) reported earlier in the week that 17 people in Seredala district had died of starvation, but Roby said the team from the administration that visited the site said local residents reported that just two people had died between January and August this year.
"The cause of the two deaths was due to illness, but not starvation," he asserted.
The Yahukimo regency administration said it was shocked to learn from Yakpesmi's report that 92 people in seven districts had died of starvation, because it has not received any reports of such incidences from village and district chiefs.
Roby said that his office had held a working meeting with all village chiefs in the regency at the end of July, but that none of them had reported that people in their villages were starving.
Similarly, no reports of the kind were made when the district chiefs came to regency capital, Dekai, to witness the vote counting process after July's president election.
Roby added that his office received a report from Walma district in July that a landslide had occurred and that farmers' mature crops were damaged. "Pahabol, from regent one, and his staff members conducted an inspection at the location and handed over relief aid. No casualties were reported in the disaster,"
Rody said teams would be dispatched to the districts that were reportededly affected by the food shortages.
"The Yahukimo Regency Administration has not reported the issue to the Papua governor because it has yet to obtain accurate data. It is unlikely for us to report Yakpesmi's findings. We must conduct field observations before issuing an official report," he said.
