WFP cuts breakfast program for poor Cambodian students (FOCUS)

By Puy Kea
PEANI VILLAGE , Cambodia , May 13 KYODO --
Soaring rice prices have forced the U.N. food agency to indefinitely suspend its popular breakfast program for underprivileged Cambodian schoolchildren. The suspension, which began May 1, may affect some 450,000 schoolchildren across the country, said Thomas Keusters, country director of the World Food Program in Cambodia . He said the program was suspended because of a budget shortfall in the wake of the price of rice shooting up to about $630 per ton in March this year compared to $265 per ton in March last year.

Keusters, warning that the scale of the impact is a ''silent tsunami,'' said the program played an important role in attracting children to school and helping them pay attention in class. The timing of its resumption will depend on donor countries, he added. In a nearly two-hour drive from the capital Phnom Penh , Moeun Danith, a 6-year-old student of Peani Elementary School , said he had no energy to study in class after the free breakfast stopped. ''I'm not feeling well. I feel weak and hungry,'' the boy told Kyodo News.

The school is located in Kompong Chhnang Province , some 60 kilometers north of Phnom Penh . School principal Kim Sophoeun said that since breakfast stocks ran out on May 3 at his school, some 30 percent of 448 students aged 6 to 14 have been absent from class, and between two and three children faint every morning. The breakfast consists of 100 grams of rice supplemented by 25 grams of yellow split peas from the United States , 20 grams of canned fish from Japan or Thailand , 10 grams of vegetable oil and 3 grams of salt. The ration, which the WFP launched in 1999, was delivered to 1,344 out of some 6,500 elementary schools across the country.

The WFP said Australia , Japan , the United States , Germany , Canada , the United Arab Emirates , and Spain were the major contributing donors to the agency in 2007. In its 2007 annual report, the WFP said less than half of Cambodian children complete grade 6 of their schooling, and in remote areas, the figure is only 31 percent. An estimated 1.4 million children of school age are economically active. The report added that childhood malnutrition in Cambodia has been a silent emergency, with over 630,000, or 37 percent of all children, under the age of 5 stunted, 36 percent underweight and 7 percent wasted, while 62 percent of children aged between 6 and 59 months are anemic.

Keusters said the WFP spent some $16 million on the program for the school year 2007-2008. Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in the region, with some 35 percent of its 14 million people earning less than $1 a day. Keusters said that in early 2007, the WFP experienced a funding crisis and virtually all food distributions had to be stopped for about two months, during which some 25 percent of schoolchildren dropped out of school.

The full impact of the latest suspension will not be known until June, when an assessment will be conducted, he said. According to the WFP, in 1999, 11.9 million children in 52 countries were beneficiaries of the WFP's school meal programs, and the number grew to 21.7 million children in 2005 in 74 countries.

KyodoMay 13, 2008