Logistics companies TNT and UPS support humanitarian operations – UN agency

United Nations Humanitarian Response Depots run by the UN World Food

Programme (WFP) in Ghana and Panama are benefiting from free warehousing facilities being provided by logistics companies UPS and TNT, the agency said today.

The depots stock vital supplies such as high-energy biscuits, drugs and other rapid response equipment essential for emergency operations, the agency said in a news release.

Amer Daoudi, Associate Director of WFP's Transport and Procurement Division, welcomed the contribution, saying it enables WFP and its partners to better respond to urgent needs. “The faster the response from these hubs, the more lives we're able to save,” he said.

Since October 2006, WFP has been using TNT's warehouse facilities at Accra's Kotoka International Airport in Ghana. UPS then followed in February 2007 by providing similar warehousing facilities at Panama's Tocumen International Airport.

Over the past 12 months, the Ghana facility expeditiously dispatched food and supplies to humanitarian operations in the Central African Republic, Burkina Faso, Chad and other countries south of the Sahara. The Panama depot has helped provide relief supplies to Peru and Bolivia in the aftermath of the earthquake in August, and to Nicaragua in response to Hurricane Felix.