Zimbabwe opposition slams UN agencies

Zimbabwe opposition slams UN agencies

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By Staff Reporter

THE opposition Movement for Democratic Change Monday criticized U.N. agencies for inviting President Robert Mugabe to open a four-day regional conference on food safety, saying that he bore the blame for Zimbabwe's current shortages.

The Food and Agriculture Organization and World Health Organization convened the Regional Conference on Food Safety for Africa in Harare to discuss a continent-wide plan of action to reduce public health threats from contaminated food.

Mugabe used the meeting of 170 delegates from 47 African countries to call on African countries to monitor imports to prevent poor quality or unwanted foodstuffs from being dumped on the continent.

"In Zimbabwe, he (Mugabe) has destroyed food security and he is not qualified to speak about it - millions go to bed hungry every night," opposition agriculture spokesman Renson Gasela said.

"I don't know what food security he could talk about," said Gasela, who condemned the U.N. agencies for inviting Mugabe to speak in view of his controversial political role.

Some African leaders including Mugabe oppose the use of genetically modified foods in aid because of concerns about their environmental impact and possible effect on human health.

"Relatively weak food safety control systems, coupled with unpredictable droughts, have had a negative impact on regional food security, thereby resulting in a growing prevalence of food-borne diseases," Mugabe told an African meeting on food safety.

"These challenges are compounded by ... the influx of new foods from new technologies and the dumping of other foods from developed countries, often under food aid programmes," he told the meeting convened by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation and the World Health Organisation.

Mugabe ascribes most problems to poor rainfall and economic sanctions imposed by western nations critical of his government's human rights record. Zimbabwe was once hailed as "the bread basket of Africa," but production has crashed in the past five years as a result of the seizure of 5,000 white-owned farms. An estimated 4 million people will need food aid this year, according to U.N. projections.

The U.N. says an estimated 2,000 people die each day in Africa from water-borne and food-borne diseases that are also responsible for the high number of diarrhea cases among children.

Chris Ngenda Mwikisa, a senior WHO official, said there had been several devastating outbreaks of diseases such as cholera, salmonellosis, hepatitis A and acute aflatoxicosis.

"Already this year 34,000 cases of cholera due to contaminated water and food have been reported in 30 countries with more than 1,000 deaths. And we should remind that outbreaks are only the tip of the iceberg since many more sporadic cases go unrecorded," said Mwikisa.

Hartwig de Haen, FAO Assistant Director-General, said it was vital to improve the quality and safety standards of African food products in order to allow them to compete on international export markets.
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