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Tajikistan

WFP Tajikistan Country Brief, December 2020

Attachments

In Numbers

442,739 people assisted in December 2020

993,049 mt of food assistance distributed In December 2020

US$ 131,377 cash-based transfers made in December 2020

US$ 2.04 m six months (February – July 2021) net funding requirements

Operational Updates

• In December, WFP held a ceremony to hand over to the Government of Tajikistan over 180 tons of vegetable oil purchased with funds from the Russian Federation. This was the first batch of a total of 300 tons of vegetable oil to cover the needs of its National School Feeding Programme in the country. The handover ceremony was attended by representatives from WFP, the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Tajikistan, the Ministry of Education and Science of Tajikistan, the Ministry of Health and Social Protection of the Population of Tajikistan and other partners.

• WFP, in partnership with the Ministry of Health and Social Protection of the Population of Tajikistan, conducted a half-day workshop in Dushanbe to discuss the key findings and recommendations from the external review of the WFP project “Prevention and Treatment of Moderate Acute Malnutrition” supported by USAID, with the participation of representatives from development partners. The review was conducted by a local organization skilled in conducting evaluations and findings will be instrumental in developing the way forward for WFP nutrition programmes in Tajikistan.

• In order to strengthen the GIS (Geographic Information System) data collection and visualization capacity of the Ministry of Education and Science of Tajikistan (MoES), WFP conducted GPS (Global Positioning System) data collection training for WFP School Feeding monitoring focal points in Khatlon and GBAO regions as well as the Districts of the Republican Subordination (DRS). The training covered 40 participants from local education departments of each district and will enable the collecting of each school’s geolocation information during the first quarter of 2021. The data will be fed by WFP into the School Feeding Programme online platform, which will provide coverage information on WFP-supported schools and help track the availability of food stock at these sites. This information will be shared with MoES and can be easily accessed through an interactive dashboard.

• Until December, through its cash-for work projects to respond to the socio-economic shocks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, WFP transferred US$422,822 to 4,600 project participants, including individuals with labour-constraints. The cash-for-work intervention is being implemented in GBAO and the districts of Rasht Valley. In Rasht Valley, within these projects, over 100 km of irrigation canals for over 4,000 ha of agricultural fields were rehabilitated. The implementation of 47 projects out of 85 have been completed in both regions.

• WFP, in partnership with the Russian Social and Industrial Foodservice Institute (SIFI), completed the renovation of bakeries in Spitamen, Jabbor Rasulov and Bobojon Ghafurov districts and Isfara town in Sughd Region. The installation of bakery equipment is expected in January 2021. Bakery renovation activities are carried out within WFP School Feeding Programme in the framework of a public-private partnership to provide schoolchildren with fresh bread on a daily basis.