The WFP buried eight metric tons of rice on the premise of its warehouse in Majuwa village in Gorkha district on Monday. Workers had thrown rice sacks into a ditch after taking them out from the warehouse. They also put salt so that the rice would rot quickly.
The latest move of the WFP comes in the wake of top WFP officials continuing to refute media reports that the food distributed by the UN body to earthquake victims was of substandard quality.
Director of Coordination and Response Division of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) John Ging, who visited Nepal in early July, termed Nepali media reports on WFP's poor quality food "nonsense."
Of the total 417 sacks of rice taken to Gorkha to distribute among the needy earthquake victims, 20 sacks of rice was found to be inedible. Parliamentary panel had made a field study in Gorkha for investigation following media reports that the food was of substandard quality.
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Although parliamentary panel found in its probe that the food was inedible, the WFP never admitted it. Locals in Laprak were enraged after the WFP refuted their complaints that the rice was of sub-standard quality.
Issuing a statement, the WFP on Monday said it destroyed the food after lab results from the Department of Food Technology and Quality Control (DFTQC) confirmed it was unfit for human consumption. "In line with the WFP procedures, the operation of destroying food will be implemented under the supervision of the district authorities and quality control inspectors of the Government of Nepal," the statement issued on Monday quoted WFP Country Director Pippa Bradford as saying.
Earlier, DFTQC had written to the District Administration Office, Gorkha to destroy the rice after lab test found that this was not fit for human consumption.
The WFP buried rotten rice in the presence of food inspector from Pokhara office of the DFTQC Shivaji Baral, Bhumika Pradhan of Tanahun, officials from District Administration Office, Gorkha and local police officials. Local journalists, who reached to the warehouse when WFP officials were preparing to destroy the food without the presence of all these government officials, were briefly barred from entering the warehouse.
Sources said WFP had made preparations to destroy the food secretly after it was stored in the warehouse for a month. The WFP, which maintained in the past that the rotten food will be destroyed in the presence of media persons, civil society members and local government administrators, had in fact made preparations to destroy them secretly for fear of negative publicity.
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