A US cargo aircraft on Thursday started dispatching 700 tonnes Bangladesh-made high-nutrition biscuits to the tsunami-devastated areas in Sri Lanka and Indonesia under the World Food Programme (WFP) relief efforts.
Four hundred tonnes of the Tk 16 lakh-biscuit will be airlifted to Banda Aceh in Indonesia and the rest to Sri Lanka tomorrow. Bangladesh was chosen as the source of the biscuits as it has the largest school feeding programme in the world, Douglas Casson Coutts, WFP representative in Bangladesh, told reporters at Zia International Airport. Coutts said Bangladesh is also best capable of producing such a quantity of biscuits in emergency situations. Deputy Chief of the US Mission in Bangladesh Judy Chammas was present to oversee the first airlift by an advance US crew of C-130 aircraft that arrived here yesterday morning. The biscuits are primarily utilised in the WFP's Nutrition for Education (school feeding) programme and current flood recovery operations.
Photo: Courtsey: The Daily Star, Dhaka
