RIYADH, 27 October 2005 — Abdul Aziz Arrukban, special ambassador of the World Food Program (WFP), will leave for Pakistan early next week at the head of a 10-member delegation for organizing the Kingdom’s relief aid program for the earthquake victims.
Speaking to Arab News, Arrukban said that in addition to SR500 million contributed by the Saudi government and SR200 million coming from Saudi citizens, a ship anchored off Dammam will sail for Pakistan with a consignment of 2,000 tons of dates. The government has also allocated an emergency grant of $3.3 million to WFP.
The WFP delegation will include representatives of other Gulf states. Besides meeting senior Pakistani officials for an assessment of the situation on the ground, they will also tour the affected areas for a first-hand look at the measures in place.
Arrukban, the first Saudi to become a WFP special envoy, said the window of opportunity for rushing relief supplies to the quake-stricken Pakistanis would close in a few weeks with the onset of winter, when the temperature would plummet.
“It must be clear to everybody that many people could die if we do not move more quickly. We must have much more funding, much sooner, to gain as much speed as humanly possible in the face of gigantic logistic difficulties,” Arrukban said, adding that the aid received by WFP so far accounts for about 13 percent of the $56 million pledged by the international community. About one million people have been uprooted by the tragedy.
“These figures will probably rise once we conclude our rapid assessments. In addition, up to three times as much money could be needed for the land and logistic operations that WFP is handling on behalf of almost all the humanitarian agencies in Pakistan,” he observed.
Arrukban said WFP had at its disposal 14 helicopters for airlifting relief supplies, besides 140 helicopters which cannot be moved up the upper reaches of the mountainous terrain.
Given the scale of the disaster, the logistics are barely enough to support the relief operations. He pointed out that 1,000 villages at higher elevations are inaccessible to the relief workers. An unknown number of people are still buried under rocks and could only be rescued, if alive, by means of air support. The WFP envoy called on the international community to pitch in with more helicopters to shore up the relief and rehabilitation program.
Arrukban said Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah had also given instructions to organize a relief program for flood-ravaged Guatemala.
“Even though we have our own priorities in terms of poverty alleviation, the Kingdom’s leadership continues to express its concern over the plight of the people of Guatemala, where more than 50 percent of the population is mired in poverty. Such broad concerns on the part of the government have earned it the nickname — the Humanitarian Kingdom.”
