‘Food won’t reach needy in time’
NGOS: ATTEMPTS TO CENTRALISE DISTRIBUTION SLATED
Additional permit for organisations already feeding the poor ‘is pointless’.
Government’s centralised food distribution plan won’t reach the desperate families on time, NGOs have warned.
Organisations trying to distribute food directly to beneficiaries have bemoaned as ill-advised attempts to centralise food parcel distribution channels.
Themba Masango, secretarygeneral of Not in My Name, said government failed to appreciate that community based organisations were better positioned to manage the food relief efforts.
“Our complaint in terms of the Covid-19 issues is that we were not happy with the statement issued on the 27th which indicates that we should come and give the food parcels to them. We are more than capable of distributing these items ourselves because communities trust NGOs better; we know these communities better and also we need to be able to give feedback to our donors. We cannot do that if we don’t know what happens to those donations,” said Masango
Not in My Name has reached more than 500 families in townships around KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng since the declaration of the Covid-19 outbreak as a national disaster.
Masango observed that the additional permit now required of NGOs to distribute food parcels were pointless for NGOs which were already compliant in terms of the requirements and had been doing the same work since before the lockdown.
Logan Kruger, a 39-year-old community worker in Bloemfontein leapt into action from the onset of the lockdown, moving to increase her feeding scheme’s capacity from 400 to 600 recipients. Hot food, which was later banned, was in high demand among the very poor, who lived without electricity or running water.
“There have been challenges with government when it comes to the delivery of food parcels to the end user – the people who have remained hungry. So we have been proactive in serving those people. I have been running a feeding scheme in a predominantly poor and coloured community,” said Kruger who intensified her feeding scheme programme to assist those affected by the Covid-19 lockdown.
Many of the more than 600 people she helped feed lived in an informal settlement which did not have electricity or running water. This meant the majority of its inhabitants struggled to cook food even if they had some.
There have been challenges in delivery of parcels