Food program has weekly flights to East Timor.
The World Food Program (WFP) started on Sunday, weekly humanitarian flights for passengers and medium load from Kuala Lumpur to Dili, East Timor. This is relief response to Covid-19 in East Timor.
The first flight that landed on Dili on Sunday afternoon, had on board medical equipment provided by WFP and by the World Health Organization (WHO), according to Lusa, official source of the organization.
On board was a consultant from the International Organization of Migration (IOM), having left on the return trip to Malaysia and six employees from the Japanese cooperation agency JICA.
In a statement, WFP announced that the weekly flights will be for transporting “medical equipment and critical aid” and also to provide appropriate “movement of humanitarian workers involved in the humanitarian response to Covid-19 and support to the government and the community”.
“Guaranteeing the movement of humanitarian material and aid workers is essential for success against Covid-19 in East Timor and around the world,” exclaimed the representative of WFP in East Timor , Dageng Liu.
“In each flight, we strictly abide to the public health protocol to avoid any possible transmission of the virus”, he stated. Since the end of January, the WFP, on behalf of the WHO and the International community sent medical and humanitarian load to 121 countries from various centers of global and regional logistics, including Kuala Lumpur and Canton, South of China.
In Asia and in the Pacific, the charter flights by WFP are giving support to the response to Covid-19 in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Laos, Myanmar and Nepal, countries where International commercial flights have been suspended in March due to the pandemic.
In the case of East Timor, the flights “are possible due to the support of the Government of East Timor and the Office of the United Nations Resident Coordinator in East Timor.”
Recently East Timor has no active cases of Covid-19.
