§ Mr. Frank Allaunasked the Minister of Overseas Development if she has now decided on further help to be given by Great Britain to relieve the suffering in Ethiopia.
§ Mrs. HartI have allocated a new sum of £500,000 as a grant for famine relief in Ethiopia. This is in addition to the £350,000 grant made last year which is almost fully committed.
A large part of the new allocation will be devoted to the provision of transport to assist with food distribution. This is the most pressing relief problem at the moment, and 10 four-ton Bedford trucks—supplied by the Ministry of Defence, paid for by voluntary agencies, and airlifted by my Department—should arrive in Ethiopia within the next 10 days. Suitable trucks are currently in short supply in this country, but we hope to send more trucks to Ethiopia over the next few months.
Other purposes for which the new tranche of relief aid will be used include, as a follow-up to the successful road-building exercise being carried out by the Royal Engineers, the continued services in Wollo province of the officer commanding the Engineers' team in an advisory capacity until the end of June, and the continuation of "food-for-work" schemes in road-building and irrigation among the Afar nomads to which we contributed at the beginning of the relief operation.
We shall continue to watch the Ethiopian situation very closely.
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