Al­though Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat says there is no da­ta to prove many cit­i­zens are suf­fer­ing from “se­vere hunger,” his the­o­ry is be­ing dis­put­ed by the lead­ers of sev­er­al char­i­ta­ble foun­da­tions.

Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion in the Sen­ate last week, Ramb­harat said Gov­ern­ment had recog­nised that now was a very dif­fi­cult time for peo­ple. He said Gov­ern­ment had put cer­tain mea­sures in place through the So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­istry, not­ing, “But there’s ab­solute­ly noth­ing to sug­gest there’s se­vere hunger in T&T.”

He list­ed mea­sures of­fered, in­clud­ing tem­po­rary food sup­port for stu­dents in the School Feed­ing Pro­gramme ben­e­fit­ing 20,500 fam­i­lies. He said all 41 MPs were each al­lo­cat­ed 500 food cards to give to stu­dents’ par­ents or guardians.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, ASH-NAD Foun­da­tion head Ash­mead Ali, whose NGO has so far dis­trib­uted more than 1,000 ham­pers to poor fam­i­lies, said yes­ter­day hunger was wide­spread in many ar­eas across T&T.

“It is true that no­body in Trinidad has ever died of hunger with­in re­cent times but I am on the ground and there are many peo­ple who are suf­fer­ing from hunger. Food has run out in many homes and many strug­gling par­ents are wor­ried about how they will feed their chil­dren,” Ali said, not­ing the prob­lem had in­ten­si­fied fol­low­ing the re­cent lock­down mea­sures en­forced to pre­vent the spread of COVID-19. (See ed­i­to­r­i­al on page 12)

Say­ing he has re­ceived scores of des­per­ate calls from poor peo­ple, Ali said some of these fam­i­lies de­pend on a ham­per to sur­vive as they have no means of in­come.

“They live day-to-day. They do not know where they will get their next meal. We have found fam­i­lies who are fac­ing very dire con­di­tions.

“Peo­ple liv­ing in a ply-board house. We have seen emp­ty food cup­boards. Some­times in the worse cas­es, it is the neigh­bours who call us and when we go and in­ves­ti­gate our­selves we re­alise that they have run out of food,” Ali said.

Ali con­ced­ed that var­i­ous char­i­ta­ble or­gan­i­sa­tions were work­ing in si­los and were not co­or­di­nat­ing ham­per dri­ves col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly. He thus called for the es­tab­lish­ment of a data­base for all char­i­ta­ble or­gan­i­sa­tions so there will no to be du­pli­ca­tion of re­sources.

He said since they start­ed food ham­per dri­ves in mid-March they have al­so come across some un­scrupu­lous peo­ple, forc­ing them to put a more rig­or­ous in­ves­ti­ga­tion sys­tem in place. But he said hav­ing been on the ground, he could ver­i­fy that many fam­i­lies were fac­ing se­vere hunger be­cause of the neg­a­tive so­cio-eco­nom­ic im­pact of COVID-19.

Mean­while, con­trac­tor Ren Gopiesingh, who is a di­rec­tor at the Pe­nal/Debe Com­mu­ni­ty Or­gan­i­sa­tion, al­so said peo­ple were be­com­ing more des­per­ate be­cause they could no longer feed their fam­i­lies. He said some peo­ple have been walk­ing to his home to beg for meals for their chil­dren.

“It is get­ting a bit out of hand be­cause with COVID-19 I have to be care­ful with hav­ing strange peo­ple come in­to my home. I have not been able to do ham­pers like be­fore be­cause we are not get­ting as much work as be­fore,” Gopiesingh said.

“When I could help, I will help. Those peo­ple who came to my home ask­ing for meals, I could not turn them away. I bought them some gro­ceries and so on. To have some­one walk for miles to come to my house to ask for help shows the lev­el of des­per­a­tion some peo­ple are fac­ing.”

His wife Karisa Collin, who heads the or­gan­i­sa­tion, has done cloth­ing dri­ves from their home in the past. 

La Ro­maine Mi­grant Sup­port Group mem­ber Ang­ie Ram­nar­ine agreed that se­vere hunger is wide­spread in some parts of T&T. She said many work­ers who have been laid off, in­clud­ing for­mer Petrotrin work­ers, have been strug­gling to pro­vide for their fam­i­lies.

“Many of them are ashamed to ask for help,” she said.

“You may have a fam­i­ly liv­ing in a big house but there is no in­come to buy food. What you see out­side is not what is re­flect­ed in­side. I just came back from drop­ping mar­ket pro­duce for a fam­i­ly who was too ashamed to come for a ham­per.”

She added that the min­is­ter’s state­ment was sub­jec­tive and he need­ed to de­fine what he meant by “se­vere hunger.”

“We and many oth­er char­i­ta­ble or­gan­i­sa­tions could ver­i­fy that hunger is wide­spread in some parts of the coun­try. Se­vere hunger is sub­jec­tive and the Min­is­ter needs to ex­plain what he means. He seems to not know that there are many, many hun­gry fam­i­lies in our coun­try at this time,” she added.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Ramb­harat re­spond­ed via What­sApp to in­di­cate that the is­sue was a now mat­ter for Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment Camille Robin­son-Reg­is to ad­dress.