All the Nepali PR consultants it's now hiring to manage the fallout from its distribution of substandard foodstuff won't help the World Food Programme (WFP) if it continues to shun the easiest (and the only) way out of its current crisis. That would be to accept its mistakes and to apologize to the victims of the Great Earthquake whom it tried to fob off with rotten food. But the WFP seems to be in no mood for such soul-searching. On Wednesday, it flew in a senior UN official to defend its post-quake efforts in Nepal. Speaking to the press on Wednesday, John Ging of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) dismissed the news of WFP's shortcomings in Nepal as 'nonsense reporting' and threatened that the UN food agency would pull out of the country if Nepali actors continued to criticize it. He said that he had personally visited quake-affected regions, and wherever he had gone, he found people full of thanks for the WFP for coming to their aid in these difficult times. (Who exactly were these thankful people, we would like to know.)It's hard to believe that a responsible UN agency like the WFP should, instead of owning up its mistakes, continue to actively court confrontation with Nepali government and its press. That it distributed inedible foodstuff in quake-affected Sindhupalchowk, Kavre and Gorkha is indisputable. These are not just allegations of the press. A parliamentary committee found the WFP guilty of distributing rotten rice in Gorkha; another team of National Human Rights Commission found that the rice stored at a WFP go-down in Kavre was "unfit for human consumption". Nepali media were only reporting on these facts. It's not clear on what basis the visiting UN official dismissed press reports of the WFP's misdeeds as "nonsense" and threatened the agency's pull-out from Nepal. The content of his message was as problematic as its delivery: It was unbecoming of a UN diplomat to adopt the hectoring tone of a master chastising his erring slaves. The UN must punish Mr Ging for this grave breach of diplomatic code of conduct.
But what next for the WFP in Nepal? We would like to see some heads roll. It's clear from government investigations that the food delivery system of the WFP in Nepal is as rotten as some of the rice it delivers to earthquake victims. If the bad arm is threatening the whole body, it's best to cut it off. Then the WFP must unreservedly apologize for its shortcomings. This crisis for the WFP must also be seen as an opportunity for the larger donor community to scrutinize their own efforts in Nepal. Many of them have been deservedly panned for parachuting in expensive 'experts'. As much as 90 percent of foreign aid that comes to Nepal, it's reported, leaves the country in consultant fees. The donors might complain all they like about the corrupt and inefficient government machinery of Nepal, but what are they themselves doing to ensure that their help reaches the intended beneficiaries? The WFP controversy will have been worth it if it's seen as an opportunity to clean up the dirty politics of foreign aid in Nepal. But signs so far are not encouraging.
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