Mahamat Tahir Zene – N’Djamena
01 January 2023
The investigative report by “Al-Araby Al-Jadeed” reveals the waste of international donor funds allocated to the World Food Programme and Chad, as spoiled and expired food items were burned in front of hungry people who tried to obtain some of it.
The Chadian Brigitte David, in her twenties, stood in amazement as she watched expired food items being burned in the Gasi area, located in the seventh district of N’Djamena, in front of the starving residents of the area. Citizens rushed to try to seize some of the destroyed items near the Chadian parliament on June 27, 2022. Despite the intervention of police officers and the firing of tear gas to disperse the citizens, some did not give up and fought to obtain some of the goods. According to David, who continued in her statement to ‘Al-Araby Al-Jadeed’: ‘The fire lasted for 3 days,’ she added sadly, ‘It would have been better to distribute these items before they expired so that we could feed our hungry children.’
Citizens tried to put out the fire and take what they could from the food products of the World Food Programme, according to Biram Alahـdoum, an inspector at the Ministry of Health, whom the reporter met on the spot during the burning. Al-Ladum added to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed: ‘Regardless of the negative effects resulting from burning these materials and the danger they pose if consumed, citizens have already taken some of them.’ He continued: ‘I agree with citizens regarding their right to obtain what satisfies their hunger, as they are starving, and the materials are being burned in front of their eyes in this way, but we must understand that human health is everything
During the process of burning these foodstuffs, members of the Civil Defense police (assigned to destroy the foodstuffs) sold expired products, according to David, who did not have the value of any of them, indicating that these products were sold secretly and at prices lower than their market value. She gave an example of the value of five-liter oil, which was sold for 2,000 CFA francs (3 US dollars), although it is sold in the market for 15,000 CFA francs (23.59 dollars).
To confirm the involvement of government employees in selling food items, the investigator negotiated with a policewoman who was on the scene to buy a bag of rice. He asked her about its price, and she replied, ‘How much do you have?’ But she backed down after she saw her supervisor approaching her, and she said, ‘Leave now and let’s meet later.’ Allah-doum and six of the workers who were burning the food items confirmed that expired food was being sold by members of the Civil Defense Police. Worker Abdullah Mohammed told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, ‘I saw large quantities of products displayed for sale by members of the Civil Defense.’
Burning food in front of the hungry
According to Ali ALHADJ, technical advisor to the National Human Rights CommissionCNDH (an independent body), 8.5 tons of expired food items were burned. He told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that the burning operations were carried out at the request of the World Food Programme office in Chad. The burned items included grains, corn flour, soybeans, pasta, rice, and oil, according to a WFP employee who preferred to remain anonymous for fear of losing his job
Firing of 8.5 tons of expired food
A similar food burning incident occurred in the Gassi area of the capital in May 2020, when the National Food Security Authority (ONASA) burned tons of bags of expired rice, which had been supplied by China. At the time, people rushed to try to pick them up, according to Dibam Vivol, a former logistics supervisor for the WFP, who told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed sadly: ‘In oil-producing Chad, its people are fighting over expired food.’
China provided Chad with 5,000 tons of rice, according to Gamar Assileck, the former director general of the National Food Security Authority, who explained to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed: ‘This was before I was appointed director of the authority, and after the appointment, I found 200 tons damaged in the warehouses. Part of the cargo was wet with water while being transported from the Cameroonian port of Douala to the city of N’Djamena, which caused it to spoil.’ He added that the part he found was declared unsafe for human and animal consumption according to the results of laboratory tests issued by the Chadian Food Quality Control Center (CECOQDA), and a decision was issued to burn it in agreement with the N’Djamena municipality and a judicial observer. However, during the burning, it became clear that the rice was not burned properly, which enabled citizens from the neighborhoods surrounding the site to take quantities of it. The burning process was stopped, and the remainder (between 600 and 700 bags) was distributed to farmers to use as fertilizer for agriculture, based on a proposal from a team from the Chadian Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Rural Equipment.
In 2022, about 6.1 million people need humanitarian assistance in Chad, or about 36% of the country’s population, according to the European Union website, entitled ‘European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations.’ The European Union is one of the main humanitarian donors in Chad, and provided 37 million euros in 2022 to meet the basic needs of internally displaced persons, refugees, and local communities affected by multiple crises.
It appears from the bags of materials that most of the materials burned in Chad came from Belgium and Sweden, according to the observations and documentation of the investigator. The World Food Programme is fully funded by voluntary donations, and in 2019 it recorded an increase of 8 billion US dollars, but it is still about 4.5 billion dollars short of its requirements, according to what the programme published on its website on February 10, 2020, entitled ‘Some facts and figures about the work of the World Food Programme,’ explaining that the average cost of each food ration provided by the programme is 0.46 dollars. While no more than 6.5 cents of every dollar donated to the programme is spent on overhead expenses.
UN acknowledges destruction of unfit food items
The 2.1 million people suffer from food insecurity in Chad, and 1.5 million people are at risk of not receiving the aid that keeps them alive, according to the Chad situation report, published on the United Nations website on July 15, 2022.
2.1 million people are food insecure in Chad
Amadou Baraze Nakaka, spokesman for the World Food Programme in Chad, acknowledges the burning of expired food items in coordination with the Chadian authorities, telling Al-Araby Al-Jadeed: ‘70% of the items we burned on June 27, 2022, in N’Djamena, were received during the years 2017, 2018 and 2019 and were already damaged,’ but he confirms that the damage is sometimes related to human errors at the source of production, and sometimes related to transportation on boats, ‘so some products arrive damaged,’ Baraze adds.
He continues: ‘There are 7% of these materials that are expired products in the Shogwa warehouses of the National Food Security Authority in southwest N’Djamena, and we were unable to distribute them due to security problems,’ but he points out that the programme has taken important measures that have led to a significant decrease in food losses over the years, which today represent 0.5%, compared to the total cargo distributed in 2021.
Among the measures taken by the World Food Programme is combating insects in food warehouses and stores, according to what activist Issa Hussein (a pseudonym because he is not authorized to speak to the media) told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed. The National Food Security Authority has provided the World Food Programme with 8 warehouses, each with a capacity of between 1,000 and 2,000 tons, as the Director General of the National Food Security Authority “ONASA” , Abakar Haroun, told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.
Distribution of expired food
The World Food Programme assisted 2.3 million people in Chad during 2021,” according to the “Central Evaluation of the Programme Covering the Period from 2018 to 2022,” issued in May 2022.
However, two beneficiaries of the World Food Programme confirmed to the investigator that they received expired relief, including the thirty-year-old Chadian, Mohamed Youssef, who lives in the town of Moussoro, northeast of N’Djamena, who told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that he received relief from the World Food Programme in August 2020 consisting of expired rice, milk, and sugar, and threw it away.
Similarly, in March 2019, Al-Nour Ali, 24, who lives in the city of Ati in central Chad, received expired flour. He told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, “We took the bag of flour from a warehouse in the city of Ati, and after opening it, we found insects inside.” He continued, “The supervisors do not care about what people are exposed to as a result of consuming these materials.” Activist Hussein admits that some beneficiaries sometimes receive expired relief supplies, saying that his organization (which receives food supplies from the World Food Programme and distributes them to beneficiaries in the town of Moussoro, in the presence of a representative from the organization, and also counts and registers those in need) distributed expired food supplies in 2019 without realizing it. He adds, “When we were distributing the food supplies, we found the production date 2017 on the packaging of the bag, which made me ask the programme representative in the town of Moussoro about that, and he replied, ‘The packaging is just old, it’s okay, distribute the supplies.’” Hussein continues, “In the last distribution process, we discovered that some of the food supplies were expired, such as the beans, so we had to replace them with another type.
This is an edited translation from our Arabic edition. To read the original article click here
