WFP scales down aid

WFP Regional Information Officer, Southern Africa, Richard Lee told The Zimbabwean on Sunday that the organisation was however still feeding thousands of chronically-vulnerable Zimbabweans in the country.
Lee said: The situation in Zimbabwe has changed considerably since the annual maize harvest began in April. As planned, WFP stopped its large-scale vulnerable group feeding programme in April because people across the country had begun to harvest their annual maize crop.
However, WFP continues to provide assistance to around 600,000 chronically vulnerable people (people on anti-retroviral treatment, families affected by HIV/AIDS, orphans, vulnerable children in school in food insecure areas among others) under our year-round, social safety net programmes.
Once a regional breadbasket, Zimbabwe has suffered acute food shortages that President Robert Mugabe has blamed on poor weather and Western sanctions he says hampered importation of fertilizers, seed, and other farming inputs.
However critics blame Zimbabwe’s troubles on repression and wrong polices by the veteran leader such as land reforms that displaced established white commercial farmers and replaced them with either incompetent or inadequately funded black farmers resulting in the country facing acute food shortages.