Families living off biscuits as Covid-19 pandemic bites
Vulnerable families in Fiji are living on a tin of fish or a packet of biscuits a day as the pandemic continues to bite.
Charities have been working hard to deal with a desperate need for food and other necessities like baby formula, masks and medicine.
On Wednesday, there were 35 new cases of Covid-19 reported and 880 overall according to Johns Hopkins University.
In the squatter settlements in the Nasinu district on the outskirts of Suva many people live hand to mouth at the best of times.
Now things are getting critical because people have been laid off during the prolonged lockdown, according to Usaia Moli, the president of the local branch of the Council of Social Services, a nationwide charity.
‘‘We attended two families last week. Six of them were sharing a packet of biscuits per day and one of the families we went to yesterday, there was a can of tinned fish for the family of seven.’’
He is working among more than 20 communities with people in a vulnerable state, including those with young babies, disabilities and other special needs.
The organisation is trying to find out who needs what so families are not left out when food packs were distributed.
Moli said the government was responding but many people were not being reached and were ‘‘suffering in silence’’.
‘‘They don’t have the right data to be able to disseminate the food to those that are really in need.’’
The charity has a ‘‘vulnerability index’’ and was working to collate data, he said.
It had helped more than 3000 families during the lockdown in Nasinu including by ‘‘digging into our pockets and our pantries’’. On the other side of the capital, Sarah Conrad’s charity First Responders has been cooking up 100 meals every Saturday for people around the Serua and Namosi area who were finding it hard to put food on the table.
So far her 100 hot meals drive has fed chicken curry and chicken palau to over 1100 people since it started last month.
Conrad said she had seen a dramatic increase in people going without food and charities were working together with local government to distribute as much as they could. ‘‘Most of the cry for food is because of the lockdown. A lot of people here do have farms they can go to but because of the curfew and the lockdown they are unable to even reach their farms.’’