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Food shortage threatens thousands in NTT
More than 30,000 families in East Sumba regency, East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) province waited for the government’s intervention to deal with the food crisis, with families consuming only banana and tubers over the past week, an official said Friday
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ore than 30,000 families in East Sumba regency, East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) province waited for the government’s intervention to deal with the food crisis, with families consuming only banana and tubers over the past week, an official said Friday.
East Sumba Regent Gidion Mbilijora said that families would need around 700 tons of rice to deal with the food shortage.
“I’ve written to the governor and the central government asking for rice assistance but have received no response,” Gidion said.
“In the meantime, the regency administration will use Rp 1.2 billion [US$133,000] from the administration budget to deal with this problem.”
He said the 34,400 families experiencing a food shortage were in 121 villages.
He also raised hope that the provincial administration and central government would immediately assist in providing 100 units of water pumps for people’s farms in 141 districts and 50 villages or subdistricts.
“The food crisis is a result of the drought, causing many fields to experience harvest failure,” Gidion said.
East Nusa Tenggara administration secretary Frans Salem said the government had distributed 100 tons of rice that would reach residents soon.
“Rice assistance helps deal with the emergency situation, while we wait for full report from the monitoring team,” he said.
The provincial administration has deployed a team to directly monitor the food crisis threatening half of its 4.2 million residents.
The food crisis was blamed on the long drought, which disrupted the planting season, causing harvest failure.
Secretary of the province’s food security and monitoring body Edgar R. Tibuludji said that the team was set up by the governor.
“The team is deployed to monitor the food crisis in 21 cities and regencies,” he said.
He said that the team was expected to discover which cities and regencies were under serious threat
from the food crisis.
“The indicator in the field monitoring will take into account the food security situation and each family’s welfare and health,” he said. Edgar said 369 out of 2,836 villages and subdistricts across the province’s 297 districts were prone to a food crisis.
Currently, regions prone to food crisis include Nagekeo, East Sumba, Rote Ndao, Timor Tengah Selatan, Timor Tengah Utara, Belu, Alor, East Manggarai, Ende, Sika, Sabu Raijua and Kupang.
He said that harvest failure occurred in 16,486 hectares of farms, or 6 percent of the total 274,578 plantation hectares.
For rice fields, the harvest failure reported took place in 5,978 hectares, or 2.6 percent out of the total 232,315 hectares, he added.
He blamed the harvest failure on the El Nino weather phenomenon, which changed rainy season patters in the country’s regions. In East Nusa Tenggara, he said, rainy season usually began in November or mid December, but it began in January this year.
