FEATURE: U.N. agency helps poor Indonesians get rice.

JAKARTA, Feb. 22 Kyodo

Ilham Ilahi, a 5-month-old Indonesian baby boy, has big eyes and breaks into laughter easily.

Ilham and his parents were visited Monday by Catherine Bertini, executive director of the World Food Program (WFP), in their makeshift house in Cipinang Besar Selatan, a slum area in eastern Jakarta.

As Bertini held Ilham, she described him as handsome. But the boy's eyes are hollow, his hair red -- two prominent symptoms of malnutrition.

Bertini visited the area to inspect the WFP-sponsored program for distributing rice to urban slum dwellers at a subsidized cost.

Cipinang Besar Selatan is home to about 600 households living in dwellings made of planks and cardboard. The small dwellings without windows or water supply are separated by extremely narrow alleys.

The smell of chicken dung and human urine pervade the air. There is only one bathroom for every 10 families.

Most residents of Cipinang Besar Selatan came from West Java Province. By scavenging recyclable scraps and selling cheap toys, they earn a weekly average of 50,000 rupiah (about $6.74) per family.

The plight of the family of Ilham and the rest of the residents of Cipinang Besar Selatan has been worsened by the Asian financial crisis that hit Indonesia in mid-1997.

The crisis reduced the income of families in the area by as much as 60%, forcing them to eat less and prompting children to drop out of school to help their parents eke out a living. Of the 100 school-aged children in the area, only 30 continue to go to school.

Of the 600 households in Cipinang Besar Selatan, 450 were so in need that they have qualified to receive assistance from the WFP since 1998. The WFP helps them get rice for their daily provision under the Special Market Operations program which sells rice at subsidized prices.

Families which can only afford to have one meal a day can buy as much as 20 kilograms of WFP-subsidized rice each month at 1,000 rupiah per kilogram, compared with 2,000 to 2,500 rupiah per kilogram in the market.

Ilham's family is of those who benefit from the WFP program. But despite this, his mother told Bertini her family has "sometimes enough, sometimes not enough" to eat and that there is nothing they can buy and eat except the WFP-subsidized rice.

In another slum area, Tanah Tinggi in central Jakarta, Bertini was told by a 37-year-old man that his family mostly eats the WFP-subsidized rice with vegetables. "If I have more money, I buy some fish."

In Tanah Tinggi there are about 7,793 households, of which 3,000 benefit from the WFP program.

Most of the men work as street vendors, on construction sites, as stevedores at train stations, or porters in the markets, while many women earn money by washing clothes. The average weekly income per household is around 60,000 rupiah.

"We try to help them to have access to food because the biggest problem for people who are desperately poor is access to food," Bertini told reporters.

"There may be enough food in the country, (but) they don't have enough income to have access it," she said.

Bertini said the WFP program has been very effective because the 14 local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) which are involved in managing the program are "very organized and systematic."

She said the NGOs are "very cautiously making sure the program runs properly and that the intended recipients of the food actually receive the food."

The WFP plans to extend the program for another 18 months from April, Bertini said.

Because of the lingering impact of the Asian financial crisis coupled with Indonesia's economic crisis, the WFP has provided food for 5.2 million Indonesians, including those in the very poor urban and rural areas, refugees and primary school children.

Since mid-1998, the WFP has provided Indonesia with 300,000 tons of rice and 17,000 tons of blended food, valued at $145 million.