A supply chain of hope Caring for the Kosovo refugees
By David Maloney -- Modern Materials Handling, 6/1/1999
Imagine the task of distributing food and other supplies to 90,000 refugees when all you have to work with are limited warehouse space, two trucks, and a forklift. This is what a major relief agency faced when the crisis in Kosovo began.Caring for an estimated 750,000 Kosovo refugees has put a huge strain on the Albanian government. International agencies are providing emergency relief, but getting supplies to the refugees is not easy. Especially in a country with an extremely limited infrastructure to handle such a crisis.
"We began dealing with refugees last June 1998," says Stuart MacNeil, head of logistics for Catholic Relief Services (CRS) in Albania. "Our caseload was 10,000 people then."
At that time, CRS operated two small 200 sq. ft. warehouses, two trucks, and owned only one forklift.
Since the start of the NATO bombing campaign, the crisis has worsened dramatically. Today the CRS refugee caseload is between 80-90,000, and those numbers change everyday. CRS has had to be creative in its approach to supply chain strategies to meet the demand.
The world responds
The United Nations World Food Program is coordinating relief efforts by utilizing international agencies that already have established networks and logistics channels. Both the International Red Cross and CRS were working in Albania when the Kosovo crisis began several months ago and have now received the majority of the international distribution task.
The Red Cross is handling supplies for refugees remaining with relatives or in individual Albanian homes, while CRS handles the job of distribution to refugee encampments.
Increasing a caseload ten-fold in just a few months forces CRS to streamline efforts wherever possible. An important step was the leasing of a warehouse in the port city of Durres, located about 40 miles from the Albanian capital of Tirana. This 1,000 sq. ft. warehouse doubled CRS's storage capabilities and placed the agency in a strategic position to off-load supplies coming in by ferryboat from Italy. Trucks can drive directly off the ferry to the warehouse.
Other supplies reach Albania by cargo planes. NATO unloads palletized food and non-food items from small planes using a forklift at the Tirana airport. Pallets are placed into staging areas where they will be later received by relief agencies.
For CRS, air transport is not the preferred method of receiving supplies. Planes hold only 20 tons each, and involve additional handling. MacNeil says direct receipt of goods by 25 ton trucks by way of a ferry from neighboring countries is more efficient.
A forklift loads supplies received at the airport onto 2 ton trucks. From there they are driven to either the Durres warehouse for storage until needed, to one of five smaller warehouses that CRS rents in various parts of the country, or directly to the refugee camps most in need of supplies.
Items destined for Durres are usually on European pallets. Once they arrive, they are unloaded with the only forklift CRS has in Albania. They are hoping to acquire at least two more.
Sacks and other items not on pallets are manually off-loaded. Items are separated into food and non-food areas and are stored on pallets at floor level. No racks or shelves are available here. While warehousing may seem primitive when compared to facilities in the U.S., it is notable that this is a make-shift arrangement in an extremely poor country.
Meeting the challenge
Getting commodities to refugees is certainly not easy. But the biggest challenge is finding them all.
"The problem is that these refugees are scattered everywhere-sometimes in 15 different sites in some cities," says MacNeil. "Right now we are building the infrastructure for our deliveries."
The problem is complicated by an ever-increasing number of new arrivals still making their way over the border and the constant movement south of existing refugees. CRS has to rely on somewhat-unreliable reports of where these people are settling.
New encampments receive daily deliveries of ready-to-eat meals provided by the U.S. government. These are similar to the types of meals consumed by military troops in the field.
Most established camps, already provided with cooking stoves, receive weekly food supplies. CRS hopes to change this to a monthly delivery schedule, but current conditions do not permit this yet.
"We have to do weekly deliveries of food," says MacNeil. "It's not because we don't have the food, it's because the numbers of refugees keep changing daily. By the time we deliver food for 15,000, the number has gone up to 20,000."
Currently, CRS handles approximately 30 delivery points in Albania. Besides the large warehouse in Durres and two smaller facilities in Tirana, three other small warehouses are strategically located to assist with distribution.
CRS uses 6 or 7 trucks daily to transport goods. The agency owns only two. The others are leased as needed. Since camps range from 500 to 25,000 people, delivery routes are adjusted according to volume. CRS is also hiring drivers and renting 2 ton vans to make deliveries to smaller, more remote camps. The drivers are all self-employed, as no major trucking companies operate in the country.
Hired help or the refugees themselves manually unload trucks and vans arriving at camps.
Each refugee center creates two mini-warehouses to handle incoming supplies-one for food and the other for non-food items such as blankets, beds, shampoo, toothpaste, detergent, and toiletry items.
Usually these warehouses are nothing more than tents. CRS and other agencies monitor activities to assure distribution among the refugees is conducted fairly. Most centers serve between 1,500 and 3,000 refugees.
Each person receives a "subsistence ration," or the standard refugee diet outlined by the World Food Program.
"It's not a comfortable amount of food to live on," says Nick McDonald, a logistics officer with CRS.
For most of the refugees, it is much less than they were used to, further adding to a feeling of despair in the camps. But, it is as much as the world community can do at the moment.
McDonald says that many people in the camps are vulnerable. Approximately 40% of the refugees are children. The rest are mostly women and elderly persons. Few young men have come across the border; it is not yet known exactly why.
Coordination is key
Besides its own distribution, CRS works as a third-party provider for various other groups assisting refugees. Several of these agencies attempted to distribute food and other items on their own, but quickly realized that existing channels are able distribute goods much faster and cheaper.
Working with so many groups and governments in an effort such as this takes a great deal of coordination. The Albanian government is still trying to work out the bugs in its own bureaucratic procedures. MacNeil says that in the beginning of the crisis, trucks loaded with relief supplies often sat at the Albanian border for up to three days waiting for paperwork approval. Poor roads, telephone, and electrical service have also hampered efforts.
McDonald says that despite all that, the coordination is really starting to work. "Certainly there have been hiccups in the supply chain, but it is feeding the refugee population, so it is vital," he says.
CRS has doubled its staff size by adding native Albanians to help with the coordination. They also hope to add more trucks and additional materials handling equipment. MacNeil says that finding adequate warehouse space and forklifts in Albania remains a major obstacle.
CRS is the international development and assistance agency of the United States Catholic community. The agency operates in over 80 countries around the world and has been working on development projects in Albania since 1993.
Visit www.mmh.com for the expanded Kosovo story.
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