Families miss out on food parcels
Families who missed out on Auckland City Mission food parcels say they are facing Christmas without enough kai or presents for their kids.
The Mission closed the phone lines for its Christmas food and gift service on Wednesday afternoon due to ‘‘unprecedented’’ demand.
One of its distribution centres for Christmas food parcels logged 42,000 calls in one day.
The phone lines are new this year, replacing a first-come-firstserved system that used to see people queueing up overnight to get a food parcel.
But after hours of fruitless calls every morning this week, mum-of-six Samantha Lui said she preferred the old system, even when it meant queueing from 4am until the afternoon.
‘‘You were guaranteed to walk away with something,’’ she said.
‘‘So many kids are going to go without this Christmas. A lot of people rely on this, and there’s nothing wrong with relying on this.’’
Now she’s trying to figure out how she can still make Christmas special for her kids – it will probably mean delaying a car payment and going into debt, she said. ‘‘Some people say ‘don’t do Christmas’, but you can’t do that to kids.’’
But another mother in O¯ tara doesn’t see any other option: ‘‘I won’t have anything to put a Christmas on with,’’ she said.
She spent three days trying to get through on the phone to get food to feed her three kids and nephew. ‘‘It’s going to break my heart to tell [my children] that Christmas won’t be happening.’’
The Mission’s Helen Robinson said she was ‘‘distressed’’ by the number of people they had not managed to help.