LABUTTA, 2 July 2008 (IRIN) - "Our whole village was washed away. We have nothing," Than Tun, a former fisherman, told IRIN.

"We lost everything. With this food, we at least have a chance," Than Tun, 38, from Kayimma Chaung, about four hours by boat from the town of Labutta at the delta's southern tip, said, referring to the rice, pulses, salt and oil he regularly receives from the World Food Programme (WFP).

A resident of the "3 mile" displaced persons camp - a reference to its distance from the town centre - Than Tun arrived two months earlier with his family after Cyclone Nargis struck, leaving more than 138,000 dead or missing and affecting some 2.4 million.

Overnight, close to one million people lost their livelihoods and were left without sufficient food.

According to the UN, just over half of Labutta's 374,000 inhabitants were severely affected by the cyclone, with half its 500 villages destroyed.

By 26 June, WFP had reached more than 300,000 cyclone-affected beneficiaries in Labutta with 3,850 MT of mixed commodities.

More than 500 villages/ward/camps under 50 village tracts, the smallest government administrative zone in Labutta, were covered.

More than 700,000 in need of food assistance

After an assessment by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on 13 June, as well as the more recent Post-Nargis Joint Assessment (PONJA), WFP estimates that 724,000 people in the delta need food assistance for up to the next six months, the vast majority living in their places of origin or nearby.

While close to half of all households surveyed in the cyclone-hit area by the PONJA reported losing all their food stocks, the percentages were much higher in the frontline townships of Labutta and Bogale, where about 82 percent of households lost all their food stocks.

More acutely, almost 28 percent reported having no food stock available on the day of the survey, while another 43 percent said they only had food stocks sufficient to last between one and seven days.

People were drawing from multiple sources to meet their daily food requirements: 51 percent were dependent on humanitarian food assistance and 54 percent on purchases from local markets, the PONJA results revealed.

Coupled with scarce employment opportunities and no harvest until November, there is an urgent need to provide relief food until livelihood opportunities are able to recover.

WFP and its 12 partners, including both local and international NGOs, travel the waterways of the delta by boat and barge delivering food rations.

"We take the food down to Labutta on larger boats and barges. Afterwards that same food is transferred on to smaller boats and taken inland to remote villages and distribution points along the way," a WFP official told IRIN.

Cash in Yangon Division

Meanwhile, in Yangon Division, which was also badly affected by the category four storm, but where urban markets have largely recovered, the food agency had been providing cash assistance to about 49,490 cyclone-affected people.

"This is the average amount one would spend on food on a daily basis," the WFP official said of the US 50 cents daily allowance.

"Giving them cash will ensure they will be able to buy their own food," she explained of the four-week programme for beneficiaries which began in early June.

The programme, has, however, since been halted by the authorities.

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