|
|
| Inmates Skip Lunch; Feed Fellow Kenyans |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 01/09/2006 |
|
Thousands of Kenya's prisoners skipped lunch last week to send food to fellow Kenyans affected by food shortages, a senior prison official said. Most of Kenya's estimated 50,000 prisoners gave up their ration of beans and corn porridge on the day President Mwai Kibaki declared the food shortages caused by drought a national disaster in an effort to speed up relief efforts, officials said. Prisoners wanted to help after watching images of starving Kenyans on TV, reading about food shortages in newspapers and discussing the situation with visiting relatives, said John Isaac Odongo, the commandant of Kenya's prison staff training college. Initial estimates show that Kenya needs about $153 million to provide emergency food to hundreds of thousands of victims of drought. Additional money is needed to provide water for people and animals, education, health care, livestock and seeds for farmers, Kibaki said. Convicts at the Naivasha Maximum Security Prison said the food shortage has been harming their relatives. Drought has also triggered food shortages in neighboring Ethiopia and Somalia. More than a million Ethiopian cattle herders face extreme shortages after the failure of rains that normally replenish water sources and sustain livestock through the dry season. In anarchic Somalia, about 2 million people need humanitarian aid and drought has affected its southern region. |
MARKETPLACE search vendors | advanced search
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
|
Comments:
No comments have been posted for this article.
Login to let us know what you think