Zimbabwe blamed by UN for blocking aid program

UNITED NATIONS - The UN emergency relief coordinator has blamed the Zimbabwe government for blocking the launch of a humanitarian aid programme for those affected by demolition of urban slums.

UN aid agencies have been discussing with President Robert Mugabe's government since early August the humanitarian "flash appeal" of US$30 million ($43.51 million) to provide shelter, food and other amenities to some 300,000 homeless people.

"We have not reached agreement with the government on a text," Undersecretary-General Jan Egeland, the emergency relief coordinator, told a news conference.

"We have not agreed on how many are affected, how to help them" or the role of private groups who work with UN agencies.

"I am very frustrated because I am an aid worker and I don't like to see my people arguing over words and so little time out in the field helping people," he said.

In addition, UN relief officials in southern Africa, interviewed by Reuters, said the government was still smarting from a July 22 UN report that called Zimbabwe's bulldozing of urban slums a disastrous and unjustified venture, which affected 700,000 people and had an impact on 2 million.

The flash appeal was proposed by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on July 22 to get help quickly to victims of the demolition in addition to those already getting assistance in Zimbabwe, where a depressed economy shows little chance of recovery. Once the breadbasket of southern Africa, UN diplomats said Zimbabweans were now crossing into Botswana.

Egeland said those evicted were living with relatives in the countryside or had gone to other urban slums. But many were sleeping outside or in overcrowded shelters.

The demolitions came at a time of a dramatic drop in life expectancy from 62 years in the late 1980s to 33.9 years in 2004, mainly due to Aids, lack of food and basic services.

"This is a meltdown," Egeland said. He said that for several reasons "many of them political", Zimbabwe got only US$4 per Aids victim compared to US$187 in neighbouring Zambia.

UN agency programmes are donating food, tents and blankets to some 100,000 people, due to an early July 1 fund-raising drive of US$11.9 million. But the abortive flash appeal was aimed at tripling that number, Egeland said.

In addition the World Food Programme, with help from the United States, was reaching some 1.1 million people in its programmes set up earlier and hoped to reach some 3 million in December, he said.

Egeland said the United Nations was hoping Zimbabwe's neighbours, such as South Africa, could convince the government "to help us help them help their people."

Zimbabwe last month declared an end to the two-month demolition operation, which government officials have said was aimed at rooting out urban crime and a prelude to building better housing for poor Zimbabweans.

But on Tuesday, Harare city authorities said they would resume efforts to drive out street children and illegal vendors who had had returned to the capital, raising concern the blitz could begin again. Egeland said he had reports of evictions in Epworth, a suburb of Harare.

Last week, the Harare government said it had prepared a 45-page response to the July 22 report by Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka, executive director of the Nairobi-based UN-Habitat agency, which was also supposed to help the government in constructing alternative housing for the homeless.

The UN report failed to address "a cocktail of social, economic and security challenges that were negatively impacting on the country's economy and the populace," the official newspaper, Herald, said.

- REUTERS