The World Food Programme (WFP) has called on the authorities in South Sudan to help recover an unspecified number of supply trucks believed to have been stolen from the agency. Most of the vehicles are specialized all-terrain trucks the agency relies on for plying bad roads and accessing hard-to-reach areas for food aid.
Evidently, the loss of the food trucks would be most felt by recipient communities for whom the WFP fleet was a lifeline.
“We were really relying on these vehicles to continue being able to assist people we can reach by road in the coming months,” Challiss McDonough, WFP’s regional communications officer, said in an exclusive interview with Radio Miraya. “We will no longer be able to get there if we do not have these vehicles.”
She said WFP was asking the authorities in South Sudan to intervene and help find the trucks, describing their loss as a despicable crime.
“Our concern is not about how this affects us, but about the effect it will have on our ability to assist people throughout the country,” she explained.
Lately, the groan of hunger has been resonating not only in far-flung places but also at the very doorsteps of the food agency’s headquarters in Juba. McDonough concedes that the recent upheavals in the South Sudan capital have severely constrained WFP’s food distribution to the Protection of Civilians (PoC) sites in Juba.
“We’re working as hard as possible to get that food distribution up and running as soon as we can,” she said, adding that it has become more challenging to move food from one side of town to another.
Looking ahead, she urged a return to normalcy, stressing that the people of South Sudan need peace and security to be able to move on with their lives.
“And as for WFP, we need for all parties in the conflict to recognize the neutrality and impartiality of humanitarian actors. They have a responsibility under international humanitarian law to allow humanitarian actors access to people in need’, McDonough said.
Besides the missing trucks, WFP is also asking the authorities to help recover food and equipment pillaged from the agency’s warehouse in Juba last week.