Press TV recently toured the town located some 250 kilometers northwest of the capital Mogadishu.
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is some 1.3 billion dollars is needed in 2013 for hundreds of humanitarian projects targeting some four million Somalis.
The local administration in Baidoa however argues otherwise. The governor of Bay and Bakool regions now wants the UN to resettle the displaced people and give them sufficient amount of money to kick start their livelihoods rather than spend millions in food aid that he says will never fully address the humanitarian crisis in Somalia.
The situation is the same in most parts of the region. Recently the Somali government announced plans to resettle the displaced from camps in Mogadishu. The majority of the IDPs in Mogadishu are from the Bay and Bakool region that was among the areas worst hit by the famine.
Baidoa town is the third largest city in South Somalia, and the fourth most important after Kismayo.
It is also the business route for most commodities transported from the nation’s capital Mogadishu to other towns in the region.