The Guinea-Bissau government has launched a program to combat severe food shortages which affected over 130,000 people in the west African country, according to a report reaching here from Bissau on Friday.

Guinea-Bissau's Agriculture Minister Sola N'Quilin was quoted as saying that the emergency nutritional program was budgeted at 2.35 million U.S. dollars.

The minister said, the program is targeted at populations affected by salination of rice-paddy irrigation channels, drought, pests and crop diseases in the country's southern rice-growing region.

Half of the land under cultivation in Guinea Bissau's southern rice- bowl region has been blighted, the minister said.

The risk of rural starvation is most acute in the regions of Quinara, Tombali and the Biagos Islands, which have a combined inhabitants of 250,000 in a country with a population of about 1.5 million.

The government's anti-famine measures will include rebuilding of irrigation channels, building up of food stocks and use of the " Food for Work" program, added N'Quilin.

Source: Xinhua