FAMINE FEARED IN EAST PAK
Baltimore, Maryland,
May, 24 (AP)
A scientist who conducted research in East Pakistan says famine in the embattled region may cause mass starvation this summer that could surpass the 1943 famine in which more than one million persons died.
Dr. William B Greenough of the Johns Hopkins Unversity Medical School says he based this warning on first-hand reports which indicate a major disruption of farming and food distribution.
The accounts came from relief workers who wrote Dr. John Roude, a former colleague of the Hopkins professor who now serves at the cholera research laboratory operated by the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization in East Pakistan, Greenough said.
Spokesmen for the Pakistan Embassy in Washington, however, denied any major disruption in farming and said relief efforts are underway. They described Roude as “a champion for one side.” “mischievous” and “troublesome”
Greenough, chief of the medical school’s infectious diseas division, conducted research on cholera in East Pakistan from 1962 to 1965.
He said the relief workers told of a shortage of arm tools and work animals, particularly in areas hit by a cyclone last November.
Food supplies sent after the cyclone are not being sent to rural areas where 90 per cent of the pepulation lives according to Greenough’s information.
And he said thousands of farmers have fled and left their fields since the outbreak of civil war March 25, according to the letters mailed him by Roude.
The letters also said Pakistani army officials had appropriated 30 power boats for food distribution by U.S. relief groups and are using them for military operations.
In the main East pakistan port of Chittagong, according to Grenough’s reports, dockside warhouses are full with food that cannot be moved, because only 10 per cent of the dock workers have remained on the job during fighting between Bengali separatists and government forces.
Many residents have no money to buy food, he added citing reports that banks which transact business in Bengali have had their funds frozen.
Reference : Indonesian Observer, 25.05.1971