Yvonne Webb

Last month, thou­sands of Trinida­di­ans par­tic­i­pat­ed in a march in Rio Claro, in a glob­al fight to end world hunger. Sim­i­lar march­es were held si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly in 75 coun­tries around the world.

Join­ing the marchers to bring to the fore the plight of the poor and hun­gry were Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Ma­yaro Win­ston "Gyp­sy" Pe­ters; UWI lec­tur­er Dr Dhanayshar Ma­habir; Unit­ed Na­tions di­rec­tor, Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­gan­i­sa­tion Flori­ta Ken­tish; and CEO Unilever Caribbean Ltd, Rox­anne De Fre­itas.

The walk against hunger was staged by The End Hunger Com­mit­tee, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Unilever Caribbean Ltd. Com­mit­tee co-or­di­na­tor Ram­lal Chadee­lal said the walk was a call to bring an end to child hunger, in keep­ing with the mil­len­ni­um de­vel­op­ment goals of the Unit­ed Na­tions World Food Pro­gramme to end child hunger by 2015.

He said his com­mit­tee had aimed to raise $50,000 through the walk, and to date they had re­ceived $18,000 in pledges but more were still com­ing in. The funds col­lect­ed would go to Unilever and would then be wired to the Unit­ed Na­tions, where the to­tal sum col­lect­ed would be added up to de­ter­mine how many chil­dren could be fed.

Last year, the UN raised funds to feed two mil­lion chil­dren world­wide, Chadee­lal said. De Fre­itas said Unilever's goal was to feed 100,000 hun­gry chil­dren in ten coun­tries. MP Pe­ters thanked God that this coun­try was not ex­pe­ri­enc­ing any sig­nif­i­cant lev­els of hunger.

How­ev­er, he not­ed grow­ing pover­ty and de­pri­va­tion in spite of an abun­dance of nat­ur­al re­sources and the ex­pen­di­ture of more than $15 bil­lion on so­cial ser­vices over the past six years. With the na­tion­al food im­port bill ex­ceed­ing $2 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly, Pe­ters be­moaned the de­struc­tion of prime agri­cul­tur­al lands for con­struc­tion of build­ings.