620 tonnes of food shipped for Rohingya refugees in B'desh

Rajamahendravaram: Nearly 620 tonnes of food material were on Monday shipped from the Kakinada Deep Water Port in Andhra Pradesh's East Godavari district for distribution among the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.

Faced with an onslaught from the Myanmar army, scores of Rohingya people have recently fled the Rakhine state of that country and taken refuge in Bangladesh.

On the directions of the Government of India, the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation (NAFED) has arranged for 62,000 food packets, each containing five kg of parboiled rice, two kg of dal, edible oil, sugar, salt, tea and milk powder, East Godavari district's Collector Kartikeya Misra said.

The packets also contain a mosquito net each.

"As per the suggestions of the NAFED, we have arranged for the food material and got it packed at two different locations in the district. The cargo is being shipped to Chittagong (in Bangladesh) and is expected to reach there in two days," Misra said.

The assistance to the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh is being provided by New Delhi as part of its humanitarian aid.

Earlier this month, a heavy-lift transport aircraft of the Indian Air Force had ferried around 55 tonnes of relief material for the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.