Although much British Government money destined for Pakistani refugees has not yet been spent, British charities have asked for further official funds to keep their aid operations afloat.

More than £8m of government money is officially stated to be “in the pipeline”—£3m to United Nations agencies and £5m as direct assistance to the Indian Government Another £2m is being held back until it can be spent on relief in the cyclone-hit delta area of East Pakistan.

The amount given by the public so far to the India-Pakistan Relief Fund is £1.38m. This is regarded by the charities as highly satisfactory in view of the £1.5m contributed earlier to the cyclone disaster relief appeal.

None of the charities concerned believes the public could be expected to support a further appeal even if, as expected, conditions deteriorate markedly. That is why they are now turning to the Government for help. Talks with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office have taken place within the past fortnight.

Mrs Judith Hart, MP for Lanark and Labour spokesman on overseas aid, says the Opposition will support these pleas when the matter is raised in the House of Commons on Monday. The situation in the refugee camps was serious enough, she said, to warrant a repetition of the Labour Government’s offer at the time of Biafra to reimburse the charities for whatever they spent within reason.

The relief fund’s £1.38m has been split among the five constituent charities of the Disasters Emergency Committee. Most of them have finally committed or actually spent at least half their share.

Oxfam, which has a staff of hundreds working in the camps, has already spent £250,000 and is spending at the rate of about £150,000 a month. Its share of the appeal and its own resources will be insufficient to sustain this effort for more than another two months After that the work will either have to be wound up or supported by government grant. Some 500,000 refugees are dependent on Oxfam for everything except a basic diet, which the Indian Government is providing.

Recent reports have reached the headquarters in Oxford of thousands of children dying of malnutrition because the daily ration of 400 grams of rice is deficient in essentials. Oxfam is therefore trying to arrange supplies of child and baby food for the 10,000 small children directly in its care.

The British Red Cross Society and Christian Aid are passing on their share of the proceeds of the appeal to sister organizations in India. Christian Aid has sent £195,000 to the Christian Agency for Social Action, which is concerned with 40 refugee camps.

The British Red Cross Society has paid about £120,000 to the Indian Red Cross Society, which has so far received about £1.5m from international sources. The British Red Cross believes the refugee situation could well get much worse, and for that reason has held back some of its funds for the time being. “We are very anxious not to overspend in the beginning”, a spokesman said.

The Save the Children Fund and War on Want both have medical teams working among refugees and have already spent or committed more than £150,000. War on Want has withdrawn some of its Brutish medical team and recruited local replacements, but the Save the Children Fund has embarked on a six-month programme on both sides of the India-Pakistan border involving a medical staff of about 30.

Both organizations are holding back funds in the expectation that the situation will worsen, and Mr Donald Chesworth, chairman of War on Want, is now in India assessing future needs.

War on Want, Oxfam and Christian Aid together make up the British Relief Consortium, which was founded to assist the area of East Pakistan hit by last November’s cyclone. The consortium is now operating again in the area after intense lobbying for permission in Dacca by Mr Ian MacDonald, the consortium’s local representative. It is believed in London to be the only outside agency allowed to work in the Delta.

A small team of British agricultural technicians has taken out 38 British tractors to plant as much of the rice crop as possible before the monsoons make further work impossible in about two weeks. They hope by then to complete the planting of at least 2,000 acres. Tens of thousands of bullocks, normally used for rice planting, drowned in the floods, and unless there is a good autumn rice crop famine in the delta area is almost inevitable. The British effort, the consortium admits, will make little difference.

This operation is costing about £80,000, leaving almost £1m of the proceeds of the cyclone disaster appeal and the £2m set aside by the British Government Another £1m has since been allocated by the Government to the relief of suffering in East Pakistan outside the delta area, and this is available to United Nations agencies.

The £5m help promised to the Indian Government on June 23 has only partly been spent. The Overseas Development Administration of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has been buying tents, marquees and other shelter materials on India’s behalf, and plans to purchase large stocks of food for the refugees.

Most of an earlier grant of £1m was spent with the World Food Programme, an international arrangement for the exchange of food surpluses. Only £250,000 has gone from the Government to British charities, mainly for drugs and transport.

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees has so far collected or been allocated more than £41m from all sources, of which the British Government's share is £2m. On Tuesday the French Government announced that its contribution would be 10m francs (£689,000).